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THE 



RIGHT AND WRONG USES 



OF 



THE BIBLE 



BY 

E'^HEBER NEWTON. 

RECTOR OF ALL SOULS' CHURCH (ANTHON MEMORIAL) NEW YORK 



11 In it is contained God's true Word."— Homily on the Holy Scriptures. 



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PAGE 

• I. The Unreal Bible 7 

II. The Real Bible 47 

III. The Wrong Uses of the Bible 81 

IY. The Wrong Uses of the Bible 105 

V. The Eight Critical Use of the Bible 135 

VI. The Eight Historical Use of the Bible 169 

VII. The Eight Ethical and Spiritual Use of the Bible. 221 



" Tlie Gospel dotli not so much consist in verbis as in mrtute." 

JOHN SMITH. 

"Liberty in prophesying, without prescribing authoritatively to 
other men's consciences, and becoming lords and masters of their 
faith — a necessity derived from the consideration of the difficulty of 
Scripture in questions controverted, and the uncertainty of any 
internal medium of interpretation." 

JEREMY TAYLOR. 

" To those who follow their reason in the interpretation of the 
Scriptures, God will either give his grace for assistance to find the 
truth, or His pardon if they miss it." 

LORD FALKLAND. 

[Rational Theology in England in the Seventeenth Century ; John Tulloch, 
D. D., II: 181, I: 398, I: 160.] 



preface. 



It lias been my custom for several years to give 
occasionally a series of sermons, having in view 
some systematic instruction of the people com- 
mitted to my care. Such a series of sermons on 
the Bible had been for some time in my mind. 
With the recurrence of Bible-Sunday in our 
Church year, this thought crystallized in the 
outline of a course that should present the nature 
and uses of the Bible, both negatively and posi- 
tively, in a manner that should be at once reverent 
and rational. In the course of this parochial 
ministration public attention was called to it in a 
way that has rendered a complete report of my 
words desirable. 

The views set forth in these sermons were not 
hastily reached or lightly accepted. They repre- 
sent a growth of years. Their essential thought 
was stated in a sermon that was preached and 
published eight years ago. My positions concern- 
ing certain books, etc-., have been taken in defer- 
ence to what seems to me the weight of judgment 
among the master critics. They are open to cor- 
rection, as the young science of Biblical criticism 
gains new light. The general view of the Bible 
herein set forth rests upon the conclusions of no 
new criticism. In varying forms, it has been that 
of an historical school of thought in the English 
Church and in its American daughter. It is a 

1 



2 PREFACE. 

view that has been recognized as a legitimate child 
of the mother Church ; and that has been given the 
freedom of our own homestead, in the undogmatic 
language of the sixth of the Articles of Religion of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church. It is distinctly 
enunciated in the first sentence of the first sermon 
in the Book of Homilies, set forth officially for the 
instruction of the people in both of these Churches. 

"Unto a Christian man there can be nothing more necessary 
or profitable than the knowledge of holy scripture, forasmuch 
as in it is contained God's true word, setting forth his glory, and 
also man's duty." 

The whole controversy in Protestantism over 
the Bible may be summed into the question 
whether the Bible is God's word or contains 
God's word. On this question I stand with the 
Book of Homilies. 

These sermons were meant for that large and 

rapidly growing body of men who can no longer 

hold the traditional view of the Bible, but who 

yet realize that within this view there is a real 

and profound truth ; a truth which we all need, if 

haply we can get it out from its archaic form 

without destroying its life, and can clothe it anew 

in a shape that we can intelligently grasp and 

sincerely hold. To such alone would I speak in 

these pages, to help them hold the substance of 

their fathers' faith. 

B. HEBEB NEWTON. 

All Souls' Church, March 1, 1883. • 



Stye Unreal Bible. 



" The Bible, and the reading of the Bible as an instrument of 
instruction, may be said to have been begun on the sunrise of 
that day when Ezra unrolled the parchment scroll of the Law. It 
was a new thought that the Divine Will could be communicated 
by a dead literature as well as by a living voice. In the impas- 
sioned welcome with which this thought was received lay the 
germs of all the good and evil which were afterwards to be 
developed out of it : on the one side, the possibility of appeal in 
each successive age to the primitive, undying document that 
should rectify the fluctuations of false tradition and fleeting 
opinion ; on the other hand, the temptation to pay to the letter 
of the sacred book a worship as idolatrous and as profoundly 
opposed to its spirit as once had been the veneration paid to the 
sacred trees or the sacred stones of the consecrated groves or 
hills." 

Dean Stanley : " History of the Jewish Church," iii. 158. 




W&t Unreal IStirfe. 

" Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a nar- 
rative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among 
us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the begin- 
ning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word; it seemed 
good to me also, having traced the course of all things ac- 
curately from the first, to write unto thee in order, most 
excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certain- 
ty concerning the things which thou wast taught by word of 
mouth/'— Luke i. 1-4. 



I HIS day, in our Church, year, calls us to 
think upon the influence of the Bible on the 
advance of man into the Kingdom of God.* 
Since the growth of written language great 
books have been the well-springs of thought and 
feeling for mankind, from which successive gener- 
ations have drawn the water of life. Since the 
introduction of the printing-press books have 
been, beyond all other agencies, the educators of 
men. And of all books of which we have any 
knowledge, those together constituting the Bible 
form incomparably the most potent factors in the 
moral and religious progress of the western world; 
and as all other progress is fed from moral and 

* The Second Sunday in Advent. 



8 THE TOKEAL BIBLE. 

religious forces, I may add, in the general ad- 
vance of Christian civilization. 

From these books the lisping lips of children 
have learned the tales of beautiful goodness which 
have nourished all noble aspirations. Over these 
charming stories of Hebrew heroism and holiness 
the imagination has caught sight of the infinite mys- 
teries amid which we walk on earth. Their touch 
has quickened conscience into life. Through their 
voices the whispers of the Eternal Power have 
thrilled the soul of youth, and men have learned to 
worship, trust, and love the Father-God. These 
books have preserved for us the story of the Life 
which earth could least afford to lose, the image of 
the Man who, were his memory dropped from out 
our lives — our religion, morals, philanthropy, laws 
and institutions would lose their highest force. 
These books have taught statesmen the principles 
of government, and students of social science the 
cardinal laws of civilization. The fairest essays for 
a true social order which Europe and America have 
known have laid their foundations on these books. 
They have fed art with its highest visions, and 
have touched the lips of poesy that they have 
opened into song. They have voiced the worship 
of Christendom for centuries, and have cleared 
above progressive civilization the commanding 
ideals of Liberty, Justice, Brotherhood. Men and 
women during fifty generations have heard through 
these books the words proceeding from out the 



THE UKREAL BIBLE. 9 

mouth of God, on which they have lived. Amid 
the darkness of earth, the light which has enabled 
our fathers to walk upright, strong for duty, pan- 
oplied against temptation, patient in suffering, re- 
signed in affliction, meeting even death with no 
treacherous tremors, has shone from these pages. 
In their words young men and maidens have 
plighted troth each to the other, fathers and 
mothers have named their little ones, and by 
those children have been laid away in the earth 
in hope of eternal life. All that is sweetest, 
purest, finest, noblest in personal, domestic, social 
and civic life, has been fed perennially from these 
books. The Bible is woven into our very being. 
To tear it from our lives would be to unravel the 
fair tapestry of civilization — to run out its golden 
threads and crumble its beautiful pictures into 
chaos. 

Yet we are threatened to-day with no less a loss 
than this. The Bible is certainly not read as of 
old. It is not merely the distraction of our 
busier lives> or the multiplicity of books upon our 
shelves, that turns men and women away from 
these classics of our fathers. Men and women no 
longer regard these books as did their fathers. 
They can no longer use them as their parents did ; 
they see no other way to use them, and so they 
leave them unopened on their tables. 

An intelligent lady said to me some time since : 



10 THE UNKEAL BIBLE. 

" My children don't know anything about the 
Bible. I cannot read it to them, for I do not 
know what to say when they ask me questions. I 
no longer believe as I was taught about it : what, 
then, can I teach them ? " 

A confession which, if all parents were as frank, 
would have to be made in many other households. 
"Where it is still used in home readings, it is, in 
hosts of houses, with the pain which mothers know 
when their children's honest questions -cannot be 
as honestly answered. 

Such a state of things is sad and dangerous. 
Unless some way be found to read these books 
without equivocation, they will gradually cease to 
be used in home instruction, and the coming gen- 
erations will grow up without their holy influence. 
This state of things ought not to have been 
brought upon us. The reverent reading of the 
Bible alone would never have led us into such 
straits. It is the old story of all human reverence. 
That which we revere, we exaggerate. Glamor 
gathers around it. The symbol is identified with 
the spiritual reality. The image becomes an idol. 
The wonderful thing becomes a fetish. So we end 
in an irrational reverence of that which is worthy 
of a real and rational reverence. Then we have a 
superstition. Superstition always results in de- 
stroying the rightful belief of which it is the exag- 
geration and distortion. 

This is the common story of superstition, from 



THE UNEEAL BIBLE. 11 

the totemism of savage tribes and the image-wor- 
ship of semi-civilized peoples on to the heathen- 
ism of the Mass. Men who felt the reality of 
a mystic communion with Christ, of which the 
Supper of the Lord was the symbol, — who felt 
the strengthening of their characters as their 
thoughts fed upon the words and life of Jesus, 
— naturally came to speak of the sacrament in 
terms of awe, which magnified the mystery, un- 
til at last they bowed down before the veritable 
body and blood of Christ, and trembled with fear 
as the tinkling of the silver bell announced that 
the priest was bringing God down into a wafer ! 
They had really heard God speaking to them 
through the sacrament ; and this never could have 
done them harm. But when they tried to express 
what they felt, they exaggerated and distorted the 
simple symbol of the Infinite Presence, identified 
it with the spiritual reality, and setup a Christian 
idol, a civilized fetish, which has done incalculable 
harm to men. The spiritual truth became an in- 
tellectual lie, and in every Catholic country super- 
stition has eaten out faith, and reason refuses to 
reverence the sacrament. 

The Bible has repeated this common story. 
The spiritual influence felt forth-flowing from it, 
the voice of God heard speaking through it, drew 
man's natural reverence to it. In trying to ex- 
press the reasons for this reverence he has over- 
stated and mis-stated the nature of these books« 



12 THE UNREAL BIBLE. 

The symbol lias been identified with the reality. 
The Bible has become an idol, a fetish. 

Bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible, is respon- 
sible for the lack of the reasonable reverence these 
sacred writings merit. This reasonable reverence 
can be recovered only by frankly putting away the 
unreasonable reverence. We must exorcise a su- 
perstition to save a faith. We must part with the 
unreal Bible if we would hold the real Bible. 
Iconoclasm is not pleasant to any but the callow 
youth. It may be none the less needful ; and then 
the sober man must not shrink from shivering 
the most sacred shrine. 

As runs the Hindu thought, the Destroyer is 
one of the forms of the Divine Power. God is 
continually destroying worlds and creeds alike ; 
but in order to rebuild. 

" Whose voice then shook the earth : but now he hath prom_ 
ised, saying, yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also 
heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing 
of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been 
made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain." 

According to its root-meaning, " learning " is a 
"shaking." Every new learning shakes society, 
now as in the days past. As the writer of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews saw, it is God who is shak- 
ing society in every such new learning, to the end 
that " those things which cannot be shaken may 
remain." Man need not fear to follow in the steps 
of God. 



THE UNREAL BIBLE. 13 

There is danger now in shaking men's faiths. 
There is danger, too, in leaving men's faith un- 
shaken — unless the Divine process of progress is 
wrong. In the stress and storm of the tossing sea, 
Faith may go down in the waters. It may also 
die of dry rot by the old wharves. There is 
danger in rash utterance, but there is at least equal 
danger in timid silence. The time never comes 
when a reconstruction does not imperil some great 
interest. None the less the reconstruction must 
go on. Delay in pulling down may make building 
up of the old structure impossible. 

As the story of past civilizations sadly shows, 
the gulf between the popular superstitions and 
the thoughts of scholars may widen until no 
bridge can span it, and religion perishes in it. It 
seems to me that the time has come when the 
pulpit must keep no longer silence. Its silence 
will not seal the lips of other teachers. Books 
and papers are everywhere forcing the issue 
upon our generation. Men's minds are torn 
asunder, their souls are in the strife. It be- 
hoves the Churches to remember that great word 
of Luther: - 

" It is never safe to do anything against the truth ! " 

When the venerable cathedral, in which our 
forefathers sought God and found Him, grows 
dangerously unsound ; when its columns have 



14 THE UNREAL BIBLE. 

crumbled and its arches have sprung, and its 
stout oaken timbers have dried into dust; the 
guardians of the sacred pile must plan its restora- 
tion as best they can. They must shore up its 
treacherous walls, take out its dead materials, 
carve new heads for the saints in the niches of 
the doors, build up the edifice anew, following 
faithfully as may be the old lines, and striving for 
the old spirit. "When the scaffolding comes down, 
we may feel a shock of pain at the strange raw 
look of that which Time had stained with sacred- 
ness. But the minster has been saved for our 
children ; and, when they shall gather within its 
historic walls, those walls will have grown venera- 
ble again with age, and they will not feel the loss 
which we have suffered, while as of old, they, too, 
shall hear the voice of God and find His Holy 
Presence. 

I propose to consider with you, carefully but 
frankly, the real nature and the true uses of the 
Bible. 

Let us examine to-day the traditional view of 
the Bible. 

It is not easy to define the popular theory of 
the Bible. Like its kindred theory of Papal In- 
fallibility, it is a true chameleon, changing con- 
stantly in different minds, always denying the ab- 
surdity of which it is made the synonym, ever 
qualifying itself safely, yet never ceasing to take 



THE UNREAL BIBLE. 15 

on a vaguely miraculous character. Various 
theories are given in the books in which theolog- 
ical students are mis-educated, all of which unite 
in claiming that which they cannot agree in de- 
fining. The "Westminster Confession of Faith may 
be taken as the dogmatic petrifaction of the notion 
which lies, more or less undeveloped and still 
living, in the other Protestant Confessions. 

This Confession opens with a chapter " Of the 
Holy Scriptures," which affirms in this wise : 

" The light of nature and the works of creation and Providence 
.... are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of 

His will, which is necessary to salvation The authority 

of the Holy Scripture .... dependeth .... wholly upon 
God, the Author thereof ; and therefore it is to be received, be- 
cause it is the Word of God 

".;,;.;-'. and the entire perfection thereof are arguments 
whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the "Word of 
God, and establish our full persuasion and assurance of the in- 
fallible truth and divine authority thereof. 

"The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary 
for His own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either ex- 
pressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary conse- 
quence may be deduced from Scripture, unto which nothing at 
any time is to be added by new revelations of the Spirit. 

"Being immediately inspired by God, and by His singular 
care and providence kept pure in all ages .... in all contro- 
versies of religion the Church is finally to appeal unto them." 

The notion which the learned divines set forth 
so elaborately at Westminster, art has expressed 
in forms much better " understanded of the peo- 



16 THE UNREAL BIBLE. 

pie." Mediaeval illuminations picture tlie evan- 
gelists copying their gospels from heavenly books 
which angels hold open above them. 

A book let down out of the skies, immaculate, 
infallible, oracular — this is the traditional view of 
the Bible. 

Let me lay before you some of the many reasons 
why this theory of the Bible is not to be received 
by us. 

I. 

This theory has no sufficient sanction by the Church. 

The Catholic or (Ecumenical Creeds make no 
affirmation whatever concerning the Bible. This 
theory is found alone, in formal official statement, 
in the creeds of minor authority, the utterances of 
councils of particular churches ; as, for example, 
in the Tridentine Decrees and the Protestant Con- 
fessions of Faith. There is no unanimity of state- 
ment among these several Confessions. Some of 
the Protestant Confessions of the Beformation era- 
state this theory moderately. Some of them hold 
it implicitly, without exact definition. One at 
least is wholly silent upon the subject. The later 
creeds of Protestantism vary even more than the 
Beformation symbols. Such important Churches 
as the Church of England, our own Protestant 
Episcopal Church, and the Methodist Church 
have nothing whatever of this theory in their 
official utterances. These three Churches unite 



THE UNREAL BIBLE. 17 

in this simple, practical, undogmatic statement 
(the sixth of the thirty-nine articles) : 

"Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation : 
so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved there- 
by, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed 
as an article of the faith or be thought requisite or necessary to 
salvation." 

n. 

The Bible nowhere makes any such claim of infalli- 
bility/or itself. 

The prophets did indeed use the habitual for- 
mula, " Thus saith the Lord." So did the false 
prophets, as well as the true. It was the common 
formula of prophetism, indeed, of the Easterns 
generally when delivering themselves of messages 
that burned in their souls. The eastern mind 
assigns directly to God actions and influences 
which we Westerns assign to secondary causes. 
We are scientific, they are poetic. We reach truth 
by reasonings, they by intuitions. No one can 
follow the processes of the intuitions.) To the 
mystic mind they are immediate illuminations 
from on high, inspirations of the Spirit of God. 
In the realm of law we trace the action of natural 
forces, and are apt to think there is nothing more. 
In the realm of the unknown we feel the super- 
natural, and are apt to think it all in all. 

The great prophets themselves did not accept 
this language of other prophets unquestioningly. 
They denied the claim unhesitatingly when satis- 



18 THE UKREAL BIBLE. 

fied that the messages were not from on high. 
They distinguished between those who came in 
the name of the Lord ; and so must we. They 
tried the spirits whether they were of God ; bid- 
ding us therefore do the same. 

Tried by the severest scrutiny of successive 
centuries/ of different races, the great prophets 
prove to have spoken truly when they declared, 
of their ethical and spiritual messages, " Thus 
saith the Lord." If ever messages from on 
high have come to men, if ever the Spirit of 
God has spoken in the spirit of man, it was in the 
minds of these "men of the spirit." But they 
made no claim to infallibility, or if they did, took 
pains to disprove it. Every prophet who goes 
beyond ethical and religious instruction, and vent- 
ures into predictions, makes mistakes, and leaves 
his errors recorded for our warning. We must 
try even the inspired men, and when, overstepping 
their limitations, they err, we must say, Thus 
saith Isaiah, Thus saith Jeremiah. 

No biblical writer shows any consciousness of 
such supernatural influences upon him in his work 
as insured its infallibility. Nearly all these 
authors begin and end their books without any 
reference to themselves or their work. The 
writer of the Gospel according to Luke thus pref- 
aces his book : 

" Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to draw up a narra- 
tive concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among 



THE UNREAL BIBLE. 19 

us, even as they delivered them unto us which from the begin- 
ning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed 
good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately 
from the first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent 
Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty concerning 
the things which thou wast taught by word of mouth." 

This ia the only personal preface to any of the 
Gospels, and it is thoroughly human. There is not 
even such an invocation as introduces Milton's 
great poem. 

These writers at times, after the fashion of the 
older prophets, affirm that they speak with divine 
authority ; but they also as expressly disclaim such 
authority in other places. St. Paul is sure, in 
one matter referred to him, of the mind of God, 
and writes : 

M Unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord," etc.* 

Immediately after he writes, as having no such 
assurance : 

" To the rest speak I, not the Lord." f 

Later on in the same letter he is so uncertain 
as to add to his judgment : 

" And I think also that I have the spirit of Grod." % 

Again, in the same connection, being conscious 
of no divine authorization, he gives his own 
opinion as such : 

''Now, concerning virgins I have no commandment of the 
Lord, but I give my judgment." § 

* 1 Cor. vii. 10. % 1 Cor. vii. 40. 

f 1 Cor. vii. 12. g 1 Cor. vii. 25. 



20 THE UNREAL BIBLE. 

Eighteen hundred years after he wrote, men in- 
sist that they know more about St. Paul's inspi- 
rations than he did himself. Against his modest, 
cautious discriminations, our doctors set up their 
theory of the Bible, clothe all his utterances with 
the divine authority, and honor him with an infal- 
libility which he explicitly disclaims. 

The New Testament writers use language which 

seems, to our theory-spectacled eyes, to ascribe an 

infallible inspiration to the Old Testament books. 

But the words have no such weight. The Epistle 

to the Hebrews opens with the words : 

"G-od, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in 
time past unto the fathers by the prophets," etc. * 

The author of the Second Epistle of Peter 
writes : 

" For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; 
but holy men of Grod spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost." f 

Such passages as these command the instant 
assent of all who reverence an ethical and spiritual 
inspiration in the prophets, and a real revelation 
through them, and they command no other belief. 

In the first Epistle General of Peter we read : 

" Concerning which salvation the prophets sought and 
searched diligently who prophesied of the grace that should 
come unto you ; searching what time or what manner of time 
the spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto, when it 
testified beforehand the suiferings of Christ and the glories that 
should follow them." $ 

* Hebrews i. 1. f 2 Peter i. 21. J 1 Peter i. 10, 11. 



THE USTKEAL BIBLE. 21 

Any idea of a progressive revelation implies 
that there was a light coming on into the world, 
which to them of olden time showed dimly a mys- 
tery into which they strove to look further. A 
vision of ideal goodness rose before them. It 
rested above the ideal Israel, chosen and called of 
God for a holy work. It shadowed that righteous 
servant of God with sorrow. The lot of the elect 
one was to be suffering. Thus the world was to 
be saved to God. This the great Prophet of the 
Exile saw. Christ's coming filled out this mystic 
vision, and it is fairly translated into the terms 
the Epistle uses. 

The prophefs were, in such lofty visionings, 

under an influence beyond their consciousness. 

" The passive master lent his hand 
To the vast soul that o'er him planned." 

All other passages claimed in support of the no- 
tion of an infallible Bible fail on the witness-stand. 

There is positively nothing in the New Testa- 
ment which lends a reasonable countenance to 
such an amazing theory. 

Even the stock argument, used when all other 

quotations failed, disappears in the honesty of the 

Revised New Testament. People who know no 

Greek see now that Paul did not write "All 

Scripture is given by inspiration of God"; but 

" Every Scripture inspired of Grod is also profitable for teach- 
ing, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness."* 

* 2 Timothy iii. 16. 



22 THE UNREAL BIBLE. 

This is precisely the claim to be made for the 
Bible, as against the exaggerated notions cherished 
about it. It is good for— all forms- of character- 
building. Its inspiration is ethical and spiritual. 
The test of the inspiration of any writing in it is 
its efficacy to inspire life with goodness. 

m. 

The Bible carries the refutation of this claim upon 
the face of its writings. 

They thrust upon the attention of all who are 
not blind the traces of human imperfection, of a 
kind and an extent which precludes any notion of 
a clean copy of a perfect script let down from the 
skies. 

The Old Testament historians contradict each 
other in facts and figures, tell the same story in 
different ways, locate the same incident at different 
periods, ascribe the same deeds to different men, 
quote statistics which are plainly exaggerated, 
mistake poetic legend for sober prose, report the 
marvellous tales of tradition as literal history, and 
give us statements which cannot be read as scien- 
tific facts without denying our latest and most 
authoritative knowledge. I shall not enumerate 
these " mistakes of Moses," and of others. That 
is an ungracious task for which I have no heart. 
It may be needful to remind the children of a 
larger growth, who persist in believing a saintly 



THE UNREAL BIBLE. 23 

mother's beliefs to be final authority in their stud- 
ies, that she is not infallible. But one does not 
care to catalogue her mistakes and taunt her with 
them. 

That which carries no such reproach in it, but 
is, when rightly read, an honor to the Bible, may 
be pointed out, as the Biblical writers, indeed, do 
for us themselves. 

The marks of a patient and noble literary work- 
manship are in every writing. 

We can see this as our fathers could not see 
it, because the glasses through which to read 
literature critically have been ground within 
our century, Literary criticism is the study of 
literature by means of a microscopic knowledge 
of the language in which a book is written, of its 
growth from various roots, of its stages of devel- 
opment and the factors influencing them, of its 
condition in the period of this particular compo- 
sition, of the writer's idiosyncrasies of thought and 
style in his ripening periods, of the general history 
and literature of his race, and of the special char- 
acteristics of his age and of his contemporary 
writers. 

Every educated person knows something of the 
working of this criticism on other books. You 
have read your Shakespeare with intelligence, and 
have felt many misgivings as to the genuineness of 
a few plays, and of passages in many plays. The 
brutalities and beastlinesses of Titus Andronicus 



24 THE UNREAL BIBLE. 

seemed impossible to the author of "The Tem- 
pest" and the "Midsummer Night's Dream." The 
historic plays seemed to you often " padded." 
But there was nothing more than guess-work in 
your conclusions, and, you suspected, in the more 
pretentious opinions of others. You take up, how- 
ever, the lectures of Hudson or the charming study 
of Dowden, and you find that criticism is becoming, 
not merely an art, depending on certain instincts 
and tastes, but a science, building slowly a well-set- 
tled body of laws and rules, and shaping already a 
well defined consensus of judgment. The growth 
of the English language and literature, the char- 
acteristics of society, of language and of lit- 
erature in the Elizabethan era, the idioms of 
Shakespeare's contemporaries, the manner of 
Shakespeare himself, in his different periods, have 
all been so minutely studied as to form a dis- 
tinct specialty in knowledge. The Shakespearian 
scholar is a well differentiated species of the ge- 
nus scholar, and speaks with a substantial author- 
ity upon what is now a real science. Tou can 
follow this teacher into Shakespeare's work-shop, 
watch the building of his plays, distinguish the 
hands which toiled over them and mark their 
journeyman's work, till quite sure where the 
Master's own inimitable touch caressed them into 
noble form, and in what period of his life he thus 
wrought. There is a new revelation of Shake- 
speare to our age. 



THE UKKEAL BIBLE. 25 

This criticism turned upon the great books of 
the ancients. Niebuhr led the way in reconstruct- 
ing the early history of the Romans. Dr. Arnold 
predicted that a Niebuhr of Jewish literature 
would arise. He came duly. His name was 
Ewald. Successors have followed in abundance. 
The principles and processes of literary criticism 
were applied to the Hebrew writings. 

In the present immature stage of this science of 
Biblical Criticism there are, of course, plenty of 
speculations and guesses, of hasty generalizations 
and crude opinions. Time will correct these. 
Meanwhile there is already so much that may 
claim to be well established as to constitute a new 
knowledge of these old books. 

The historical books are seen to be the work of 
many hands in many ages. They gather up the 
popular traditions of the race, carry down on their 
slow streams fragments from such far back ages 
that we have almost lost the clue to their story — 
glacial boulders that now lie strangely out of 
place in the rich fields of later eras ; songs of rude 
periods, nature myths, legends of semi-fabulous 
heroes,-folk lore of the tribes, scraps from long- 
forgotten books, entries from ancient annals, pages 
torn from the histories of other peoples to fill out 
the story ; the whole worked over many times by 
many hands in many generations. 

Just as Thirlwall and Grote give us studies of 
Grecian history from the standpoint of Monarch- 



26 THE UNREAL BIBLE. 

ism and Republicanism, so in the Kings and 
Chronicles we have studies of Hebrew history 
from a prophetic and priestly point of view. 

The legislation of the Pentateuch, supposed 
formerly to have been drawn up by Moses, ap- 
pears, as it now stands, to be a codification, made 
as late as the period of the Babylonian exile, 
under the influence of the hierarchical and ritual 
system, then crystallizing into the form familiar 
to us all. This codification, like its famous par- 
allel in Roman history, the code of Justinian, 
collated the decisions and decrees already in 
existence from various periods, and reissued them 
as one body of laws. 

It brings together the " Judgments " of early 
days upon questions of civil life — the decisions of 
tribal heads concerning the rights of person and 
property, the counterparts of the "Dooms" of 
English history ; the moral rules of the local 
priests in a simple state of society ; and the ritual 
and discipline of a late ecclesiastical age. The 
compilation is not very skilfully done, so that we 
pass from the minutiae of a priest's vade mecum in 
a highly developed hierarchical period to the civil 
statutes of a rude patriarchal society, whose very 
crimes are archaic. 

The prophecies break up into fragmentary col- 
lections, in which the words of many different and 
obscure prophets are grouped under the name of 
some great prophet, as was quite natural in an 



THE UNREAL BIBLE. 2? 

uncritical age ; the whole mass being arranged 
with little chronological order. 

The Psalter separates into several books of 
sacred song, dating from different periods. They 
repeat the same Psalm, and divide one Psalm into 
two and jqin two into one, on principles by no 
means apparent to us. Some of these Psalms are 
of a highly artificial and mechanical structure. 
There are acrostics, in which the couplets begin 
with the successive letters of the Hebrew alpha- 
bet ; double acrostics, and other refinements of lit- 
erary ingenuity; the sure signs of a flamboyant 
and decadent literature. 

The other writings of the Old Testament and 
the books of the New Testament have yielded 
similar general results to the touchstone of criti- 
cism ; concerning which it is needless to speak 
further. 

Our critical glasses bring out, clear and strong, 
the fact of a human, literary craft in these books, 
the signs on every hand of the labor of brain and 
skill of pen through which the literature of a 
venerable nation, and of the infant church born of 
it, took slow shape into our Bible. Such -a work 
needs must have in it the traces of human imper- 
fection; and these limitations of thought and 
knowledge, these mistakes of fallible writers, are 
to be seen by every one, save those who will not 
see. 

It is impossible after such a study to rest in the 



28 THE UNREAL BIBLE. 

illusion of an infallible book, of which, as a book, 
God can be said to be the " author." 



IV. 

The growth of this theory is plain to us, and dis- 
credits its authority. 

The explanation that Max Miiller makes of the 
growth of superstitious reverence for ancient tra- 
ditions in Hindu history is suggestive on this 
point. 

" In an age when there was nothing correspond- 
ing to what we call literature, every saying, every 
proverb, every story handed down from father to 
son received very soon a kind of hallowed charac- 
ter. They became sacred heir-looms, sacred be- 
cause they came from an unknown source, from 
a distant age. There was a stage in the develop- 
ment of human thought when the distance that 
separated the living generation from their grand- 
fathers or great-grandfathers was as yet the near- 
est approach to a conception of eternity, and when 
the name of grandfather and great-grandfather 
seemed the nearest expression of God. Hence 
what had been said by these half human, half 
divine ancestors, if it was preserved at all, was 
soon looked upon as a more than human utter- 
ance. Some of these ancient sayings were pre- 
served because they were so true and so striking 
that they could not be forgotten. They contained 



THE UKKEAL BIBLE. 29 

eternal truths, expressed for the first time in 
huma,n language. Of such oracles of truth it was 
said in India that they had been heard, Sruta, 
and from it arose the word Sruti, the recognized 
term for divine revelation in Sanskrit." * 

How, in later times, the great writings of the 
Hebrews came to acquire the same exaggerated 
sacredness, we can also observe. We read in one 
of the historical books of the Jews that " Nehemiah 
founded a library and gathered together the writ- 
ings concerning the Kings, and of the prophets, 
and the (songs) of David and epistles of Kings 
concerning temple gifts. "f This formation of a 
National Library was really the germ out of 
which grew the Old Testament. It was a purely 
civic act by a layman, but it expressed the honor 
in which the national writings were coming to be 
held. It is coincident with this that we find a 
priestly movement to draw a sacred line around 
the more important writings of the nation. 

Tradition has credited Ezra, the priestly coad- 
jutor of Nehemiah, with the first formation of the 
Old Testament Canon. The two traditions ex- 
press one and the same fact from the secular and 
ecclesiastical points of view. In the exile, the 
stricken nation came to value and honor its na- 
tional heritage as never before. Its literary 
sense was quickened by close contact with the 

* Sacred Books of the East, vol. i. p. xiii. 
f 2 Maccabees, ii. 13. 



30 THE UNREAL J3IBLE. 

civilization of Babylonia, whose great library con- 
stituted one of the chief treasures of the central 
city. It was natural that on their return to their 
native land the Jews should gather their race- 
writings and found a National Library. 

The genius of Israel had always been religious. 
Its very literature was pre-eminently religious. 
That their venerable writings should be received 
as sacred was thus wholly natural. They were 
in reality sacred writings. 

Moreover, a large part of these writings, and that 
part largely drawn from very ancient times, was 
composed of judicial decisions, legislative codes, 
etc., around which veneration properly gathered. 
This veneration was heightened by the popular 
traditions which assigned to Moses the bulk 
of their legislation, and traced it through him to 
Jehovah himself. During the exile a remarkable 
priestly development, which had been running 
on through two centuries, at least, culminated in 
a completely organized hierarchy and an elabo- 
rate cultus. 

In the process of this final development in 
Babylonia the legislation and histories of the na- 
tion were worked over by priestly hands in 
the priestly spirit. The law of Moses was now for 
the first time completely set before the people, 
and on the restoration to Judea was made the law 
of the land. It became, therefore, in a new sense 
sacred. $ 



THE UXEEAL BIBLE. 31 

The fresh, free inspirations of the prophets — in- 
spirations most real and divine — died out in the 
exile, smothered partly by this priestly develop- 
ment.* 

When no living prophet arose to make men hear 
the voice of God, men had to hearken for that voice 
in the words of the dead prophets. In the syna- 
gogues or meeting-houses which developed during 
the exile, when the holy temple was in ruins, and 
which, having been found useful, were continued 
in the restoration, the writings of the prophets 
were read each Sabbath. The true writings of the 
chief prophets had therefore to be indicated. 
Thus came the canon of the prophets. 

The freedom with which the author of the 
Chronicles used the ifraterial of the older histo- 
rians, which had been tak#n up into the sacred 
writings, shows that the sacredness attached to 
them had not isolated them into extra-human 
writings even a century and a half after Ezra. 

The process of exaltation was at work, however, 
and continued thenceforth through the national 
history, increasing as the life of the nation ebbed. 
It was the period immediately following the 
destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, which 
busied itself in closing the canon of Jewish Scrip- . 
tures. Death bound up that Bible. No new chap- 

* The Jews and the priests have found it good that Simon 
shall be their leader and high priest forever until there shall 
arise a trustworthy prophet." — 1 Mace. xiv. 41. 



32 THE UNREAL BIBLE. 

ters could be added, because there was no more 
life left to write them. In its dotage this noble 
nation became known, by its superstitious rever- 
ence for the law, as " the people of the book." 
Learned doctors gravely taught their pupils that 
" God himself studies the law for the first three 
hours of every day." 

The superstitious exaltation of the sacred writ- 
ings, coincident with the lapsing life of the nation, 
was partially responsible for it, as it discouraged 
the fresh inspirations of the soul, and suppressed 
all free spiritual thought. 

The genesis of the similar theory concerning the 
Christian Scriptures repeats the story told above. 

The formation of the Christian Church was a 
period of astonishing literary productivity, com- 
mensurate in extent a^id worth with the impor- 
tance of Christianity. It was a creative epoch in 
history. The life and teachings of Jesus stirred 
the minds and thrilled the souls of men. The 
higher spheres brooded low upon our world. 
Spiritual influences of unparalleled magnitude 
were working in society. The " Spirit of God 
moved upon the face of the waters." 

"Writings of all sorts abounded. They carried 
such weight as their author's name or their in- 
trinsic worth imparted to them. Even the most 
valuable were not so prized or guarded as to pre- 
vent some of them from being lost. Paul's own 
letters suffered from this neglect. Had a few 



THE UNREAL. BIBLE. . 33 

copies of these inestimable letters been made by 
the churches to whom they were sent such a fate 
could not have befallen any of them. These writ- 
ings were quoted freely by the early fathers, who 
rarely cared to give the exact language even of 
the great apostle. 

As the churches multiplied and organized, the 
need of selection from the multitudinous litera- 
ture of Christianity was felt. Genuine letters had 
to be distinguished from spurious letters. Accu- 
rate knowledge of the life and teachings of Christ 
had become a vital necessity. The growth of 
legend and fable, in the Apocryphal Gospels, 
threatened to swallow up the memory of the real 
Jesus. A sifting process went on in the churches, 
by which the unimportant and objectionable writ- 
ings were gradually winnowed out and the wheat 
retained. 

The Christian consciousness tried and tested 
every writing, accepting those which approved 
themselves inspired by inspiring. 

In the course of time this thoroughly vital proc- 
ess, through which public opinion passed upon the 
Christian writings, was recorded officially in the 
legislative action of councils, and thus, after many 
incertitudes and vacillations, the selection of 
sacred writings was finished and the New Testa- 
ment canon was closed. It was closed, as in the 
case of the canon of the Old Testament, by the 
gradual loss of free spiritual and literary produc- 



34 THE UNREAL BIBLE. 

tivity; closed, as the visions fade and the tides 
fall within the soul, and the period of criticism 
follows the period of creation. 

These, writings became rightly sacred as the 
mementoes of the Divine Man, and the counsels of 
the great apostles ; a shrine in which men drew 
near to the supreme manifestation of God upon 
earth. But they became wrongly sacred also, as 
the lengthening lapse of time isolated these pre- 
cious heirlooms of the Christian household into 
relics it was blasphemy to criticise ; as the fall- 
ing waters of the river of life stranded high 
above men's reach the thoughts and experiences 
of the inspired fisher-folk of Galilee. In the Dark 
Ages, when to read was a sign of distinction, and to 
write a schoolboy history like " Eginhard's Charle- 
magne " was a prodigy ; when to lead clean lives, 
and to labor as hosts are doing now for their fel- 
lows, made a man a saint ; the literary and spirit- 
ual power of the apostles was nothing less than 
preternatural. 

In the Reformation the old story repeated itself. 

In the days of fresh inspiration men surely did 
not fail to prize the blessed books whence had 
come their new life. But the sense of the divine 
life in their own spirits enabled them to judge of 
the inspiration of the Apostles at once reverently 
and rationally. They did not hesitate to criticise 
freely the sacred books. Erasmus wrote of the 
Bevelation : 



THE UKKEAL BIBLE. 35 

" I certainly can find no reason for believing that it was set 
forth by the Holy Spirit. . . . Moreover, even were it a blessed 
thing to believe what is contained in it, no man knows what that 
is. . . . But let every man think of it as his spirit prompts 
him." * 

Luther wrote of the Epistle of James, 

" In comparison with the best books of the New Testament, 
it is a downright strawy epistle. " f 

The ebbing tide again left the second generation 
critical and not creative. After the sages and 
prophets of Protestantism - came the scribes and 
doctors, and they were concerned not so much 
with the manly religion of free learning which 
Erasmus cherished, or the ethical and spiritual 
religion which Luther roused, as with establishing 
Protestantism and waging its doctrinal controver- 
sies. They wanted an authority for faith and mor- 
als to set over against the authority of Rome. The 
age knew of no other authority than external, extra- 
natural, official authority, the king by divine right 
in the realm of thought. In the place of the au- 
thority of the Church rose the authority of the 
Bible ; an oracular, infallible, miraculous Book, in- 
stead of an oracular, infallible, miraculous Church. 
Men could only sustain the elaborate speculative 
system they had spun out of the New Testament 
letters, by insisting upon the authority of the 

* Introduction to the New Testament. Samuel Davidson, 
I. : 279. 

f Introduction to the New Testament, Samuel Davidson, 
I.; 334. 



36 THE UNREAL BIBLE. 

apostles in metaphysics as strongly as upon their 
authority in ethical and spiritual principles. When 
dogma became divine, the books whence it was 
drawn were deified. 46 " 

We simply enter into the heritage of the men 
who spent two and a half years in elaborating the 
Westminster Confession, the first chapter of which 
petrified this superstitious theory of the Bible. 
Profoundly as we reverence these truly sacred 
books, for the real revelation they record as coming 
in the spirits of holy men who spake as they were 
moved of the Holy Ghost, and supremely in the 
person of the Son of Man; and rightly as we 
recognize a Providential purpose in the prepara- 
tion of these books for the guidance of human 
life ; the history of these same thoughts and feel- 
ings in the past should warn us from renewing 
ancient exaggerations, injurious to the best influ- 
ence of the Bible. 



This theory is incapable of a statement which is not 
sdf -stultifying. 

To be an infallible authority upon all the 
matters upon which it treats, a book must not 
only be guaranteed in its thought. Thought 
changes more or less in finding an expression. 

* The contrast between the fifteenth and sixteenth century 
Confessions of Faith reveals this process, and explains the prev- 
alent Protestant theory. 



THE UNREAL BIBLE. 3? 

No two statements of an idea or of a fact can be 
exactly alike. There are no real synonyms. In- 
terchangeable words have each a special shade of 
meaning. The guarantee must cover the phrase- 
ology of the original language in which the book is 
written. The words must be dictated to amanu- 
enses. The thorough-going verbal inspirationists 
are the only logical defenders of infallibility. 

But the guarantee would need to be pushed still 
further in the case of a book written as was 
the Bible. The best stenographers make mis- 
takes in filling out their abbreviations and in 
distinguishing the similar signs which stand for 
very dissimilar sounds. Early Hebrew was a 
language of abbreviations. No vowels were used. 
Consonants stood alone, and their conjunction, 
aided by memory, was expected to suggest the 
proper vowel accompaniments. Yowel points 
were added to the written language centuries after 
the last book of the Old Testament was -written.*' 
Their insertion demanded a guarantee, if infallibil- 
ity was to be secured. 

This guarantee must then have followed every 
copyist in the original tongues, every translation 
of the Hebrew and Greek into other tongues, 
every copyist in modern tongues through the ages 
before the printing-press, every printer, who, 
since Gutenberg, has issued a Bible — if we are to 

* About 600 a.d. 



38 THE UNHEAL BIBLE. 

be absolutely sure of having an oracular and an 
infallible Book. 

The Westminster Confession, indeed, seems to 
follow its theory through most of these lengths, 
and a Protestant Council in Geneva in 1675, with 
a magnificent courage of conviction, actually af- 
firms this supernatural direction of the translators 
of the Bible. But such notions are of the same 
nature with the preposterous traditions of the 
Jews, as to the translation of the Septuagint ; ac- 
cording to which, seventy elders, separated from 
each other, produced seventy versions, which, on 
comparison, " agreed exactly " ; whereby men 
knew that the Scriptures were " translated by 
the inspiration of God." "With such tales we 
must leave the theory they seem necessary to au- 
thenticate in the lumber-loft of superstitions. 

VI. 

TMs theory of our Bible is, in our age, seen to be the 
same theory which all peoples have entertained of their 
bibles. 

For the first time in the history of Europe, 
Christian people have the knowledge by which 
they can correct their ideas about the Bible, in 
what may be called a comparative science of 
Bibliolatry. We know that nearly every race 
lias had its own Sacred Book. These Sacred 
Books are now within the easy reach of all. 



THE UNREAL BIBLE. 39 

Anyone can examine for himself the Vedas, the 
Zend-Avesta and the other Bibles of humanity. 
Every one can readily form a just judgment of 
these Bibles. The light which lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world shines from many 
pages in all of these books. There are profound 
thoughts of God, noble ethical ideals, deep per- 
ceptions of sin, yearning desires for human good, 
gleams of life beyond the grave. There are 
prayers we could use here with a few verbal 
changes, and you would not recognize their pagan 
source. There are songs of praise which might 
be made our canticles. There are parables that 
the Master Himself might have spoken. But the 
light which shines from heaven through these 
books does not disguise their earthly character. 
Having no glamor of tradition over our eyes, we 
can see them to be histories, poems, philosophies, 
rituals, counsels of religion, hallowed by age into 
Sacred Books. 

Yet we find precisely the same notions current 
in each race about its Bible that we have cher- 
ished concerning our own Bible. The Hindu talks 
of his Yedas as the Christian talks of his Testa- 
ments. Nay, we find our conceits quite outdone in 
the dogmas of these heathen. Mohammedan doc- 
tors of divinity divided into fiercely contesting par- 
ties over the question whether the Koran was crea- 
ted or uncreated ; the latter theory, as most highly 
magnifying their Sacred Book, of course, becom- 



40 THE UNREAL BIBLE. 

ing the orthodox doctrine. These learned ortho- 
dox divines assured men that the Koran was verily 
eternal and uncreated, and of the very essence of 
God ; that the first transcript of it had been from 
everlasting by His throne; that a copy, in one 
volume, on paper, was, by the hands of the angel 
Gabriel, sent down to the lowest heaven in the 
month of Ramadan ; from whence Gabriel revealed 
it to Mohammed in instalments, giving him the 
privilege, however, of beholding the heavenly 
volume, bound in silk and adorned with gold and 
precious stones, once a year. 

We cannot mistake the fact that thoroughly 
human writings have been exaggerated into super- 
human scriptures by the deference rightly called 
forth towards these venerable books, so influential 
in the histories of nations, so potent in the lives of 
men ; and we can study the phases through which 
a wholesome reverence degenerated into a puerile 
superstition. 

Bibliolatry is pushed to a redudio ad dbsurdum 
in these pagan worships of their Sacred Books. 
Men will see their folly in the reflected light of 
these kindred follies, and another superstition will 
disappear from Christendom. ^ 

On these grounds, as on others, the unreal Bible 
must be expected to pass away. The Church at 
large never properly authenticated it. The Bible 
nowhere calls for such a view of itself. Scripture 



THE UJSTKEAL BIBLE. 41 

reveals to a critical study manifest tokens of its 
human fallibility, ^ts thoroughly literary character. 
We can trace the growth of this theory, and account 
for it naturally. As a theory it cannot be stated 
reasonably. It is a theory which is shown to be a 
superstition in the bibliolatries of other peoples. 

Our bibliolatry is disappearing none too fast. 
It has always wrought evil as well as good on civ- 
ilization. Like all other anachronisms, its origi- 
nal helpfulness to progress has now become a 
hindrance. The day when it was of service is past 
for educated people, whose minds are open, and 
the evils it has caused flow from it still. 

It has bred a, superstitious use of the Bible 
which has always made mischief, though a mis- 
chief never realized as sensibly as now. It has 
taught men to turn to these holy books and 
accept unquestioningly all therein recorded as 
authoritative on our thought and life. It has 
barred all research which even seemed to contra- 
dict its history or science, and has held Europe 
in mental swaddling-bands, preventing normal 
growth. It has taught Most Christian Kings to 
war with easy consciences, after the fashion of the 
Israelites in Canaan, and priests to sing solemn 
Te Deums over battle-fields where men lay welter- 
ing in one another's blood. It has given slave- 
owners the coveted proof that the peculiar system 
was a divine institution, and has founded the auc- 
tion block for human cattle solidly upon the laws 



42 THE USTBEAL BIBLE. 

of God. It has supplied Joseph Smith with a war- 
rant for polygamy in the social usages of the Arab 
sheiks three thousand years ago. It has opened 
a sacred refuge for every lie and wrong ; no 
wildest form of which could fail to find some 
precedent within these Hebrew histories, which 
tell the story of a people's upward growth from 
savagery. It has furnished an arsenal stocked 
with proof texts, from which, through many gen- 
erations, priests and doctors have armed them- 
selves to war with one another; exhausting in 
ecclesiastical and theological strife the holy en- 
ergies of Christian enthusiasm, which might else 
have changjd the face of the earth. It has arrayed 
faith against reason, by the necessity it has im- 
posed of reconciling every new discovery with the 
cosmogony of Genesis, or the metaphysics of Ro- 
mans; putting asunder those whom God hath 
joined together, in the needless conflict of science 
and religion. 

It has driven away from the real revelation held 
in these sacred writings increasing numbers, in 
the growing generations ; deafening their ears by 
its irrational clamor to the voice of the Living 
God which whispers in these pages, through the 
holy men who spake as they were moved of the 
Holy Ghost. It has fathered the doubt which to- 
day sits, cheerless and chill, within the hearts and 
homes of thousands who once rejoiced in the 
warmth and light of God, but who now accept the 



THE UNREAL BIBLE. 43 

alternative their teachers thrust upon them — " all 
or none" — and throw away^ the Blessed Book 
wherein God of old revealed Himself to them. 

It has made the sacred ark of Israel so vulner- 
able that its defenders dare not challenge the 
great Goliath of the Philistines, who, year by 
year, comes forth to strut before the armies of the 
saints in ridicule of that they hold so dear; and 
thus it is to be held responsible for the loss of 
the young. men who tkrow away their ancestral 
faith and go over to the apparently victorious side 
of Unbelief. 

It has slid in a false bottom to men's faith ; 
shoving in a supposititious revelation of miracle 
above the real revelation which is in nature and 
in man, and in the Christ as the ideal man ; and 
thus holds back that reconstruction of belief 
which Providence is forcing on, as It is shaking all 
things, to settle faith upon the everlasting veri- 
ties : whereon religion, planting its feet on the 
solid rock, may lift its head into the skies, and 
worship Him in whom we live, and move, and 
have our being, the God and Father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, " Our Father who art in Heaven." 

In the name of religion let it die ! 

Then there will be a resurrection, and the Bible 
will live again, clothed in a higher form for our 
most rational reverence. All that ever made the 
Bible a Sacred Book, lives on to-day and will live 
on while these books exist. Holy men of old 



44 THE UNREAL BIBLE. 

spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost. 
They were most truly inspired. The Biblical 
writers recorded a real revelation. These books 
hold for us the words of God. The "Word of God 
speaks to us in the person of Jesus Christ. 

These spiritual realities, no criticism can touch. 
And these spiritual realities make the Bible. 

Book of our Fathers, venerable and sacred, 
speak still to our souls those words proceeding 
from out the mouth of God on which man liv^th ! 



II. 

Itje Heal Bible. 



" Out from the heart of nature rolled 
The burdens of the Bible old; 
The litanies of nations came, 
Like the volcano's tongue of flame, 
Up from the burning core below, — 
The canticles of love and woe. 

*■ * * ■* * 

The passive Master lent his hand 
To the vast soul that o'er him planned. 

. Himself from God he could not free." 

The Problem. 

" Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost."— 2 Peter, i. 21. 

The most original book in the world is the Bible. . . . The 
elevation of this book may be measured by observing how cer- 
tainly all observation of thought clothes itself in the words and 
forms of speech of that book. ... Whatever is majestically 
thought in a great moral element instantly approaches this old 
Sanscrit. . . . People imagine that the place which the Bible 
holds in the world it owes to miracles. It owes it simply to the 
fact that it came out of a profounder depth of thought than any 
other book,— Emerson, The Dial, October, 1840, 




II. 

m)t Meal mblt. 

|EN of the Scriptures" was the title as- 
sumed by the Karaites, a sect of devout 
Jews, who, about the middle of the eighth 
century of our era, threw aside tradition, and ac- 
cepted as their sole authority the canonical writ- 
ings of the Old Testament. Seeing the good that 
the Bible has wrought for man in the past, we may 
well emulate the reverence of these Karaites ; while, 
seeing the unreality of the traditional notion of 
the Bible that they held, and the mischiefs it has 
bred, we may well disown their superstitiousness. 
Can we gain a view of the Bible which, without 
stultifying our intellectual nature, may satisfy our 
spiritual nature, and leave us free to call ourselves 
men of the Scriptures ? The only road to such an 
end must be that which our age is opening so suc- 
cessfully through every field of study ; as, dismiss- 
ing preconceptions, it builds. with care and candor^ 
upon solid facts, the causeway to a certain knowl- 
edge. 

Let us take up the Bible as we would any other 
collection of books, and see if, without assuming 
anything concerning it, we cannot find our way to 



48 THE EEAL BIBLE. 

a rational reverence for it, as real as that which our 
fathers had. The lines of our inquiry have been 
projected by a hand you own as high authority. 
The results of the survey are in the text. Real 
men wrote real books ; holy men wrote holy 
books ; and, when we come to account for their 
holy, human power, we can only say — The Divine 
Spirit stirred in them ; " holy men of old spake as 
they were moved of the Holy Ghost." 

The Bible is a collection of many writings, in 
many forms, by many hands, from many ages. 
Genuine letters these, whether they be belles-lettres 
or not; by every mark and sign most human 
writings, whether they be holy Scriptures or not ; 
the product of honest toil of brain and hand. 
Whatever more they are, these are bona fide books, 
of men of like passions and infirmities with our- 
selves. 

What is there in these books which has led 
Christendom to assign to them so high an honor ? 



1. These boohs have the venerableness which belongs 
to ancient writings. 

With what interest and care we handle a very 
old book, and turn its well-worn pages, thumb- 
marked and dog-eared by men of Oxford or of 
Florence in the Middle Ages ! Unless we are the 
baldest * materialists, we will not reserve for the 



THE KEAL BIBLE. 49 

parchment body of some old book the respect 
called forth by its soul. The latest re-embodiment 
of an ancient writer, fresh from the presses of Put- 
nam or of Appleton, merits the honor belonging to 
the book given to the world so many centuries 
ago/ and fed upon by successive generations. 
Thus I look at the Plato on my shelves. Hoy/ 
venerable these writings ! Over their great words, 
on which I rest my eyes, my fathers bent, as their 
fathers had done before them ; generation after 
generation finding inspiration where still it flows 
fresh and full for me. Thus every reverently 
minded man ought to feel concerning the Bible. 
The latest of these books is probably seventeen 
hundred years old, and the earliest has been writ- 
ten twenty-seven hundred years ; while in the 
more ancient of these writings lie bedded some of 
the oldest fragments of literature known to us. 
These books have been the constant companions 
of men and women through two or three score of 
generations. The crawling centuries have carried 
these books along with them — the solace and the 
strength of myriad millions of our kind. Porms 
now turning into dust, holy in our memories, read 
these familiar pages. Men whose names carry us 
back through English history knew and prized 
these writings; Cromwell, Shakespeare, Chaucer, 
and the Great Alfred. When Eome was the 
seat of empire, Constantine heard them in his 
churches. Aurelius informed himself about them. 
3 



50 THE REAL BIBLE. 

In the lowly hamlet hidden away among the hills 
of Galilee, the boy Jesus listened to these tales of 
Hebrew heroism and holiness from His mother's 
lips. Judas, the hammerer, fired his valiant soul 
from them ; and, while wandering in the hill coun- 
try of Judsea, David chanted, to his harp's accom- 
paniment, these legends of the childhood of his 
race. The Bible, is hallowed by the reverent use 
of ages. 

2. These books form the literature of a noble race. 

The Old Testament is a Library of Jewish Let- 
ters. The germ of the collection was planted by Ne- 
hemiah, when " he, founding a library, gathered to- 
gether the acts of the kings, and the prophets, and 
otDavid, and the epistles of the kings concerning 
the holy gifts.* This germ grew gradually into 
its present shape. The Apocrypha belongs to 
it, and is rightly bound up in our Bibles, for 
reading in our churches. These books of the 
Canonical and Apocryphal writings do not cover 
the whole literature of the Hebrew nation. Many 
writings have been lost inadvertently. Many have 
been dropped as unworthy of preservation. We 
have the garnered grain of Hebrew literature 
in our Bible — a winnowed national library. It 
includes histories, juridical codifications, dramas 
of love and destiny, patriotic songs and state an- 
thems, the hymnal of a people's worship, philo- 
* 2 Maccabees ii. 13. 



THE KEAL BIBLE. 51 

sophic writings of the sages, collections of pro- 
verbial sayings, works of religious fiction, orations 
of statesmen, and oracles of mystic seers. 

The New Testament is the literature of the 
Christian Church in its creative epoch ; the 
work still, in the main, of Jewish hands, as 
Judaism was blossoming into a universal relig- 
ion. It is thus the literature of the most im- 
portant religious movement civilization has ex- 
perienced ; a movement whose unspent forces 
we are feeling still, in the flooding tides of prog- 
ress. It, too, forms a winnowed library ; the sitt- 
ings of Sayings of Jesus, lives of Christ, apos- 
tolical and other letters, visions and romances ; 
and holds the choicest mental products of this 
fertile era. In it are gathered memoirs of the 
Founder of Christianity, doctrinal and ethical trea- 
tises from the hand of the man who, under Christ, 
was the chief factor in the early Church ; similar 
essays, in the form of letters, from other more or 
less important leaders, representing the various 
phases of original Christianity ; a fragmentary and 
free sketch of the apostolic labors, and the last 
great effort of apocalyptic genius, in the Revela- 
tion of St. John, the Divine. 

3. This literature of the Jewish nation and of the 
Christian Church is intrinsically noble. 

The Bible has lost much of its fresh charm for us, 
with whom its finest sayings are household words. 



52 THE REAL BIBLE. 

We parsed Virgil and Homer in our boyhood 
until the aroma of poetry exhaled from their 
hackneyed pages, and we can scarce think of them 
now save as grammatical exercises. The Bible 
has thus palled upon our imagination, through 
the uninspiring familiarity of early task-work. 
But were it possible to read it in our manhood for 
the first time, how the blood would beat and the 
nerves thrill over some of its pages. We should 
then understand the sensations of a French salon 
upon a certain occasion. Our shrewd philoso- 
pher-minister, Franklin, had previously heard 
the literati wont to gather there ridiculing the 
Bible, and had guessed that they knew little of it. 
Upon this evening he observed that he would much 
like to have the judgment of the assembly on a cer- 
tain Eastern tale he had lately come across, un- 
known probably to most of those there present, 
though long ago translated into their own tongue. 
Whereupon, drawing from his pocket a copy of 
the Bible, he had a Parisienne, let into the secret, 
read in her sweet tones the book of Buth. The 
company was thrown into raptures over the charm- 
ing tale, which lasted until they found its name. 

How fresh, with the crisp air of morning, are 
these tales of primitive tradition! How naif 
these simple stories of Hebrew heroes ! What 
so fine in religious poetry as some of the strains 
from the Jewish Hymnal? What a noble drama 
is Job, the Hebrew Faust ! How wise the pro- 



THE REAL BIBLE. 53 

verbial sayings ! What pure passion and lofty im- 
agination stir through the pages of the greater 
prophets! "Where are to be found letters like 
those of Paul ? "What biographies have the artless 
simplicity of the Synoptic Gospels, or the mystic 
spirituality of the Gospel according to St. John ! 

No critic of our age has finer literary feeling 
or more dispassionate judgment than Matthew 
Arnold ; and he has edited the second section of 
Isaiah as a text book for the culture of the imag- 
ination in English schools. In the introduction 
to this Primer he observes : " What a course of 
elequence and poetry is the Bible in our schools." 

Goethe shared Arnold's- love of the Bible, and 
was so constant a reader of it that his friends re- 
proached him for wasting his time over it. Burke 
owned his indebtedness to the Bible for his unique 
eloquence. Webster confessed that he owed 
to its habitual reading much of his power. Buskin 
looks back to the days when a pious aunt compelled 
him to learn by heart whole chapters of the Bible, 
for his schooling in the craft of speech, in which 
he stands unrivaled among living Englishmen. 

Emerson writes : 

" The most original book in the world is the Bible. This old 
collection of the ejaculations of love and dread, of the supreme 
desires and contritions of men, proceeding out of the region of 
the grand and eternal seems .... the alphabet of the 
nations, and all posterior writings, either the chronicles of facts 
under very inferior ideas, or when it rises to sentiment, the com- 
binations, analogies, or degradation of this. The elevation of 



54 THE REAL BIBLE. 

this book may be measured by observing how certainly all obser- 
vation of thought clothes itself in the words and forms of speech 
of that book .... Whatever is majestically thought in a 
great moral element, instantly approaches this old Sanscrit . . 
. . Shakspeare, the first literary genius of the world, the 
highest in whom the moral is not the predominating element, 
leans on the Bible ; his poetry presupposes it. If we examine 
this brilliant influence — Shakspeare — as it lies in our minds, we 
shall find it reverent, not only of the letter of this book, but of 
the whole frame of society which stood in Europe upon it, deeply 
indebted to the traditional morality, in short, compared with the 

tone of the Prophets, secondary People imagine that 

the place which the Bible holds in the world, it owes to miracles. 
It owes it simply to the fact that it came out of a profounder 
depth of thought than any other book. " * 

Even what seem to us valueless books turn 
out, when studied naturally, most interesting and 
suggestive. 

Jonah, that stone of stumbling and rock of of- 
fence to the modern youth, becomes, when 
rightly read, a noble writing, full of the very 
spirit of our age. Around the tradition of Jonah, 
the son of Amittai, a prophet of whom we know 
nothing in other writings, some forgotten author 
has woven a story, to point a lofty moral. Jonah 
feels himself called to go to Nineveh and cry 
against it, because of its wickedness. Quite nat- 
urally, he does not relish such an errand. 

The prospect of a poor Jew's reforming the gay 
and dissolute metropolis of the earth, which sat 
as a queen among the nations, singing to h'erself, 

* The Dial : October, 1840. 



THE REAL BIBLE, 55 

" I will be a lady forever," was not brilliant 
enough to fascinate him ; and the prospect of the 
reward he would get from the luxurious people of 
pleasure, whose well-opiated consciences he should 
rudely rouse by calling their intrigues and carou- 
sals wickedness, was only too clear. Jonah fled 
from his duty. In his flight occurs the marvelous 
experience with the big fish, that has so troubled 
dear, pious people who have read as literal his- 
tory what is plainly legendary. After this fabu- 
lous episode, the story takes up its ethical thread. 
Jonah finds that he cannot flee from the presence 
of the Lord, that he cannot decline a mission im- 
posed from on high. He goes to Nineveh ; cries 
out against its sins, as God had told him ; and, 
as God had not told him, predicts its overthrow 
in forty days, as a judgment on its crimes. 
But, contrary to his expectations, the city is stirred 
by his preaching ; and King and court and peo- 
ple repent and amend their ways. Whereupon 
the Divine forgiveness is extended at once to 
these wicked Pagans, and the fate they had de- 
served is averted. But in this turn of affairs 
Jonah's prediction failed, and so he was dis- 
pleased and was very angry, and took the Al- 
mighty to task quite roundly, for his lack of vigour. 

' ' Was not this my saying when I was yet in my country ? 
Therefore, I fled before unto Tarshish, for I knew that thou art 
a gracious God, and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kind- 
ness, and repentest thee of the evil." 



56 THE REAL BIBLE. 

What was to become of preachers if, after they 
had threatened destruction upon evil-doers, the 
Most High went back upon them thus ? The later 
breed of Jonahs may profitably study the after 
scene, in which God is made to rebuke the frightful 
selfishness and hardness which, rather than have 
one's theories belied, would have a city damned. 

" Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast 
not labored. . . . and should not I spare Nineveh, that great 
city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that can- 
not discern between their right hand and their left hand, and 
also much cattle ? " 

The moral marvel of Nineveh's general repent- 
ance on the preaching of an obscure Jew is as un- 
natural as the physical marvel of the fish story. 

Recognizing that the whole tale is a parable, 
which takes upon it purely legendary drapery, and 
ridding ourselves thus of all the questions which 
puzzle Sunday-school scholars and theologians, 
we are ready to read the meaning of the parable. 
God is not the God of any one race or religion. 
He cares for Gentile as for Jew. He sends a 
prophet of Israel to bid a pagan city repent, that 
He may forgive it freely. These Pagans under- 
stand the message of the Jew. The commands of 
conscience are owned and honored by the heathen, 
oven more quickly than by the people of God ; 
whose own Jerusalem never thus quickly obeyed 
a prophet's message. The city whence had come 
Israel's woes is held up as a pattern to the sacred 



THE REAL BIBLE. 57 

city herself. All men, then, are brothers, partakers 
of the same moral and religions nature ; children 
of One Father, whose voice they hear in different 
tongues, speaking to their souls the same messages 
of holy love. 

Thus read, Jonah becomes the protest of liberal 
Judaism against the narrow, exclusive tendencies 
of popular piety in Israel. It is the writing of some 
genuine Broad-Churchman of the olden time, pro- 
claiming the high truths of Human Brotherhood 
tinder a Divine Fatherhood, breathing that spirit 
of which, long after, another Jew dared say — 

" And now abideth faith, hope and charity, but the greatest 
of these is charity." 

If such be the hidden value of one of the least 
attractive of these writings, we may well say, with 
Milton, 

"I shall wish I may deserve to be reckoned among those who 
admire and dwell upon them." 

4. This literature has been very influential in the 
development of progressive civilization. 

When the writings of Greece and Eome had been 
buried in the ruins of the Roman Empire, the liter- 
ature of Israel was preserved by the pious care of 
the Christian Church. The light of Athens went 
out, and the light of Jerusalem alone illumined the 
dark ages. The only books known to the mass of 
men through long centuries were these writings of 



58 THE REAL BIBLE. 

the Hebrews and the early Christians. Thought 
was kept alive by them, imagination was fed from 
them, conscience was educated and vitalized 
through them. For a thousand years there was 
practically but one book in Europe — the Bible. 
"When the long gestation of the middle ages was 
fulfilled, and the modern world was born, while 
the educated classes read the exhumed classics of 
Greece, the people still read the Bible. It gave, 
in the person of Luther, the impulse that restored 
intellectual liberty and moral health to Europe. 
It has continued the best read book of Western 
civilization ; the only book much read, until of 
late, by the mass of men ; the one foreign and 
ancient literature familiar alike to the plain people 
in Germany and France, in England and America ; 
the common well-spring of inspiration to thought 
and imagination, to character and conduct. 

It is the Magna Charta of our liberties ; the re- 
vered companion and master of the Pilgrims who 
sailed the wintry seas, and, on Plymouth Bock, 
building wiser than they knew, founded a nation 
covenanting freedom of conscience unto all men ; a 
nation on whose Bell of Independence runs the 
Bible legend, " Proclaim liberty to the inhabitants 
thereof." 

Wherever society is found to-day in travail with 
a new and higher order, the conception can be 
traced to the seminal words of the Bible. The in- 
stitutions and manners of progressive civilization 



THE REAL BIBLE. 59 

are what they are because in the heart of that 
civilization has lain the Bible. 

My brothers, were these books nothing more to 
us than such ancient writings, the literature of so 
noble a race, a literature intrinsically fine, to 
which our civilization owes so much of mental and 
of moral influence, they should win our reverence, 
and should shame the wantonness of liberalism, 
falsely so called. 

What if in these ancient writings there are 
ancient errors, the marvels which a child age exag- 
gerated into miracles, stories of savage cruelty and 
brutal lust in rude, rough times, acts of supersti- 
tion dark and dreadful, utterances which to us are 
blasphemous ascribed to the Eternal and Holy 
One ? Such faults are inevitable in the literature 
that records a nation's growth from barbarism. 
Were a man in the name of Liberty or in the name 
of Truth to hunt through Homer, to rake together 
all the errors and superstitions embalmed in these 
immortal sagas, to haul up from the obscurity 
where sensible people leave them the lewdnesses 
suggested or described, and then to fling these 
blemishes at the book in which the children of 
Greece and England and America have read with 
tingling blood the tales which stirred their souls, 
by what name would we call him ? By that name 
let him stand forth impaled upon the scorn of an 
age that has not lost the grace of reverence, who, 
mindless of majestic age, the dignity of letters, an 



60 THE REAL BIBLE. 

influence unrivalled and benign, associations tender 
and most holy, upon these venerable and sacred- 
books . spits his shallow scepticism, spumes his 
spleenful sarcasm, and smuts them with his own 
sensuality. 

Let Irreverence stay her ribald tongue before 
these illustrious writings, and Indecency vomit 
her own nastiness elsewhere than on our Bible. 

II. 
The Bible lays a yet deeper claim upon our rever- 
ence. These books constitute the literature of a 
people whose genius was religion, whose mission 
was its evolution into universal forms, whose writ- 
ings express the moods and tenses of that develop- 
ment ; whose history is the organic growth which 
flowered in the life of Him who freed religion from 
every swathing band, and gave the world its pure 
essential spirit ; after Whom all races are being 
drawn as one flock under one Shepherd. 

1. Israel's specialty in history was religion. 

Every people finds laid upon it certain necessary 
activities, in most of which all peoples find their 
common tasks. Every nation must cultivate agri- 
culture, handicrafts, trade and commerce ; must 
develop social, political and religious institutions. 
Each people will, however, do some one thing 
better than the rest of its tasks, better than it is 
done by other peoples. Each great race has 



THE REAL BIBLE. 61 

some commanding inspiration ; some ideal which 
masters every other aspiration and ambition, ener- 
gizes its efforts and shapes its destiny. It creates 
a specialty among the nations. The real legacy of 
each great race lies in the works wrought in the 
line of its highest aptitudes. Thus Borne devel- 
oped a genius for civil organization. She con- 
quered the whole western world, united isolated 
nations under one empire, cleared the Mediterra- 
nean for safe and free communication, opened roads 
as 'arteries through the vast body politic, estab- 
lished post communications for travellers and the 
mails, carried law and order into every obscure 
hamlet, consolidated a polity which, by sheer 
massiveness, lasted for generations after the soul 
of Eome had fled, and left to posterity, in her in- 
stitutes, the basis for modern jurisprudence. 
Thus Greece evolved a genius for art, developed 
architecture and sculpture to the highest perfec- 
tion the world has seen, made statues thicker 
than men in Athens, made men more beautiful 
than statues, sighed even after Virtue as. the Be- 
coming, the Perfect Beauty, left the world temples 
whose ruins are inspirations, and marbles whose 
discovery dates the epochs of culture.' Israel 
essayed to do many things that other peoples 
achieved, and promised success in more than 
one direction. At a certain period she bade fair 
to develop into a martial empire, and to become a 
lesser Assyria or Eome. A little later she seemed 



62 THE REAL BIBLE. 

about to rival the Phenicians in commerce. About 

the same time she 

' ' advanced as far as the Greeks before Socrates towards pro- 
ducing an independent science or philosophy. " * 

But she found herself content with none of these 
roles. She had a higher part assigned her in the 
drama of history, to which her secret instincts re- 
sistlessly drew her. Her predominant character- - 
istic was an intense religiousness. Everything in 
the life of her people took on a serious and devout 
tone. Patriotism was identified with piety. Her 
statesmen were reformers, idealists, whose orations 
were sermons, like the- speeches of Gladstone in 
the Midlothian campaign, dealing with politics in 
the light of eternal principles. Legislation was 
developed through the " judgments" of priestly 
oracles. Poetry lighted her flames at the altar. 
Philosophy busied itself with ethics. The Muse of 
History was the Spirit of Holiness. The nation's 
ambitions were aspirations. Her heroes grew to 
be saints. The divine became to her, not the true 
or the beautiful, but the good. She evidently had, 
as Matthew Arnold said of John Wesley, " a ge- 
nius for godliness." 

2. Israel's literature became thus a religious litera- 
ture. 

Her histories were written for edification. 
They present the past of the people in such light 
* Ewald: History of Israel, i. 4. 



THE REAL BIBLE. 63 

as to inculcate virtue and inspire piety. Her 
poems are songs of pure love, like Canticles ; or 
dramas whose plot lies in the problem of evil, like 
Job; or hymns in which the soul seeks com- 
munion with God. i The Psalter is the hymnal of 
the temple choir at Jerusalem. The prophets are 
preachers of righteousness, personal, social, polit- 
ical. Even the writings of her sages or philoso- 
phers are almost wholly ethical and religious. 
No other people's literature is so intensely and 
pervasively religious. Other nations have relig- 
ious writings as a part of their general literature. 
Israel's whole literary life was sacred. There is 
scarcely a book left by her to which we may not 
go to feed religion.* 

3. Israel's literature presents us, in the various moods 
and tenses of her life, ivith the various phases of relig- 
ion. 

The glory of a truly National Church is that 
it takes up into itself every form of spiritual and 
ethical consciousness within the nation, and ex- 
hibits in each successive school of thought, in 
each movement for a nobler social life, a phase of 
true religion. This is the glory of Israel. Eelig- 
ion never separated itself into an institution 
apart from the State. 

There was no Jewish Church, of which Dean 

* Esther is the most notable apparent exception, but this is 
only apparent. * 



64 THE REAL BIBLE. 

Stanley wrote the history. Church and State 
were one. Sacred and secular history flowed in 
one common stream. The history of Israel was 
the history of Judaism. Its choicest literature 
formed its sacred writings. Religion was never nar- 
rowed to a theory, an institution, an "ism," a sect, 
a school. It was as generous and as rich as the 
broad, free life of the nation. Every factor essen- 
tial to a noble religion was thus supplied from the 
sound and healthy life of the people. 

The inner life of the soul was voiced in the 
hymns of Israel, to which we still turn for the in- 
spiration of personal piety in our private devo- 
tions ; and which lift the public worship of the 
moderns as they swelled the souls of the hosts 
who waited in the temple courts at Jerusalem, two 
thousand years ago. 

A cultus of character through ritual and disci- 
pline was elaborated by the priesthood in that 
wonderful system which, rebaptized, does duty 
still in the Catholic Church. The true outer 
sphere for personal religion, trained, if need be, by 
an ecclesiastical cultus, was fashioned by the 
great prophets, the men of the people ; who 
poured their passion for righteousness into aspi- 
rations for a true commonwealth, in which Jus- 
tice should be throned on law, and international 
relations be ruled, not by Policy, but by Principle. 
Natural religion was nobly set forth by the sages 
in Proverbs, The Wisdom of Jesus, and the other 



THE REAL BIBLE. 65 

"Writings ;" all of which, were characterized by 
a calm and rational philosophy, that recognized 
the laws of life and fed the wisdom which obeys 
them. Even Agnosticism, in so far as it is the 
confession of the inadequacy of every interpreta- 
tion of the universe, finds despondent yet still 
earnest expression in Ecclesiastes, and humble, 
hopeful expression in Job ; and the silence of 
many of the noblest natures of our age, which the 
churches brand as irreligious, finds place among 
the phases of religion in their Sacred Book. * 

Almost every form of strenuous ethical life, al- 
most every answer that earnest souls have found 
to the problem of life, is to be drawn from the 
writings of this many-sided people. Thus their 

* In speaking of the book of Esther, Dean Stanley observes that 
"it never names the name of God from first to last," and re- 
marks: "It is necessary for ns that in the rest of the sacred 
volume the name of God should constantly be brought before us, 
to show that He is all in all to our moral perfection. But it is 
expedient for us no less that there should be one book which 
omits it altogether, to prevent us from attaching to the mere 
name a reverence which belongs only to the reality. . . . The 
name of God is not there, but the work of God is. . . . When 
Esther nerved herself to enter, at the risk of her life, the pres- 
ence of Ahasuerus — ' I will go in unto the king, and if I perish 
I perish' — when her patriotic feeling vented itself in that noble 
cry, ' How can I endure to see the evil that shall come unto my 
people? or can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?' 
— she expressed, although she never named the name of God, a 
religious devotion as acceptable to Him as that of Moses and 
David, who, no less sincerely, had the sacred name always on 
their lips." — History of the Jewish Church, iii. 201. 



66 THE REAL BIBLE. 

literature feeds a rich and rounded life of relig- 
ion. 

I) 4. Israel's literature presents us with the record of 
a continuous growth of religion upward through its 
normal stages. 

Religion grows like every form of human life 
with the growth of man himself. It is coarse, 
crude and cruel while man is a savage, and as he 
becomes civilized — by which I mean something 
more than wealthy — it becomes intelligent, rea- 
sonable, ethical and spiritual. The growth of 
Israel from barbarism carried with this progress 
the growth of Israel's religion. In the earliest 
times which we can historically reach the Israel- 
ites were semi-nomadic tribes, slightly distin- 
guishable from their kindred Semites. The relig- 
ion of the people appears to have been then a 
commingling of fetichism, the worship of things 
that impressed the imagination, great trees and 
huge boulders, with the worship of the various 
powers of nature, the orbs of heaven, the repro- 
ductive force of the earth, etc., under the usual 
savage and sensual symbolisms. 

From such unpromising beginnings, through 
the successive stages of polytheistic idolatries, 
religion was gradually led up, in the advance of 
the general life of the people and through the in- 
spirations of a series of great men, to the recogni- 
tion of One Eternal and infinite Being ; the Lord 



THE KEAL BIBLE. 67 

of nature and of man, the Father of all mankind, 
Holy, Just and Gracious ; whose truest worship 
is the aspirations of his children after goodness. 

' ' Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord," writes the 
Deuteronomist ; " and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all 
thine heart and with all thy soul and with all thy might." 

Malachi, looking round upon the manifold forms 

of worship of the various nations, and discerning 

that through them all the soul of man was feeling 

after one and the same Divine Being, makes God 

say: 

"From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the 
same my name is great among the Gentiles; and in every place 
incense is offered unto me and a pure offering ; for my name is 
great among the heathen, saith the Lord of Hosts." 

Micah asks, 

" What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to 
love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God? " 

Of this continuous growth of religion the Old 
Testament is the record. 

5. Israelis literature records the forcing forward of 
this growth of religion, as by some Power back of man, 
shaping its ends, rough-hew them as it might 

The Niebuhr of Hebrew history rightly pointed 

out this significant fact in the introduction to his 

great work. 

" The manifold changes and even confusions and perversities, 
which manifest themselves in the long course of the threads of 
its history, ultimately tend to the solution of this great prob- 
lem."— Ewald: Intro. 



68 THE REAL BIBLE. 

A singular succession of great men arise to save 
and revive and reform religion in every critical 
epoch. Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, 
Ezekiel, Ezra, Judas Maccabeus come upon the 
stage, one after the other, perform their several 
parts with singular aptitude, and prepare the way 
for the next movement when it comes due. The 
history of the people rightly read becomes a mighty 
drama, in which the right man is never wanting at 
the right time, and the action moves on steadily 
toward a climax. 

The experiences of the people, even those most 
perplexing to the faith of the nation at the time, 
fit singularly into this organic evolution of religion. 
The rending of the Kingdom of David, that blight- 
ed the fair prospect of a martial empire, turned 
the nation aside from the false career on which it 
was entering. The overthrow of the Northern 
and then of the Southern Kingdom, and the de- 
portation of the people to Babylonia, seemingly 
the ruin of the sister countries, threw them in upon 
their inner life ; and in the exile their religion 
found its highest reach of thought. 

Even that hierarchical movement which so 
quickly followed upon this bloom of prophetism, 
and which to the superficial look seems only the 
arrest of life and the beginning of death, reveals a 
legitimate function in the organic processes of the 
national religion. ^ In this priestly organization of 
institutional religion, all free prophetic inspira- 



THE REAL BIBLE. 69 

tion did indeed die out for over four centuries. 
But eyen this was a necessity for the right flower- 
ing of religion. The age was not ready, politically 
or intellectually, for the ripening of the thoughts 
of the prophets. Had they ripened then, they 
would have fallen to the ground, as the untimely 
fruit of a too-early spring. Four centuries were 
to be tided over before the political and intellect- 
ual conditions were found for the blossoming of 
this flower. This holding back of the normal evo- 
lution of Hebraism was the function of the Priestly 
Reaction — a curious parallel to the function of 
Catholicism in Mediaeval Christianity. 

Like the Catholic Church, the Jewish priest- 
hood held society together when, in the destruc- 
tion of the political power, there was no other 
bond of unity. As in the Catholic Church, the 
High Priest became a temporal ruler, the Prince 
of Israel, as he was called ; and kept the sacred 
city still the seat of government. As in Catholi- 
cism, the institutionalizing of religion that fol- 
lowed the period of free prophetic life was an 
effort to embody that life, to incrust and thus pre- 
serve it ; and, in the one case as in the other, 
though the crust of institutions choked the fur- 
ther growth of spiritual religion, it yet did keep it 
sluggishly alive within this hard bark, through 
times that else would have proved fatal to it. As 
in Catholicism, this priestly cultus really drilled 
deep into the natures of men the principles and 



70 THE REAL BIBLE. 

laws and habitudes of ethical and spiritual relig- 
ion ; and stored the force which, when its rigid rou- 
tine and fettering formalism became unbearable, 
burst through this crust and opened a new world 
of fresh, free life. 

Of this singular shaping of the nation's expe- 
riences to further the growth of true religion, the 
Old Testament is the impressive record. 

6. Israel's literature thus presents the picture of a 
nation's patient, insistent pressing forward, through 
long centuries, toward the fruition of its ideal, the 
realization of true religion. 

So continuous is Israel's movement toward the 
ideal of religion, so straight the line of her ad- 
vance, that it seems as though the nation had a 
Conscious aim, seen afar and steadfastly pursued 
by generation after generation, unwilling to stop 
nhort of attainment. It is the founder of scientific 
Biblical criticism who thus expresses his sense of 
the wonderfulness of this historic movement : 

" This aim is Perfect Religion; a good which all aspiring na- 
tions of antiquity made an attempt to attain; which some, the 
Indians and Persians, for example, really labored to achieve with 
admirable devotion of noble energies, but which this people alone 
clearly discerned from the beginning, and then pursued for cent- 
uries through all difficulties, and with the utmost firmness and 
consistency, until they attained it, so far as among men and in 
ancient times attainment was possible."* 



* Ewald : History of Israel, i. 4. 



THE REAL BIBLE. 71 

7. The literature of Christian Israel records the 
realization of this long sought ideal, the fruition of this 
organic growth. 

The nation found the times ripe at last for the 
final process of this historic evolution ; the dead 
cerements of Judaism fell apart, and thereout 
bloomed that perfect flower of religion, the re- 
ligion of the Christ, simple, free, ethical, spirit- 
ual. The extant literature of this last' creative 
effort of Israel constitutes the New Testament. 
The Gospels tell the story of the life of the 
Founder of Christianity, clearly enough in the 
main outlines, and embalm many of the words 
and deeds of the Son of Man. The other writings 
of the New Testament illustrate the working of 
the thought and spirit of the Christ in the Church 
bodying around Him through the growth of a cent- 
ury. In them we see that the long cherished 
ideal of Israel, an Ethical and Universal Religion, 
had at last incarnated itself in The Master whose 
plans laid the foundation of this new Order ; into 
which men were coming from the east and from 
the west, and from the north and from the south, 
and were sitting down in the Kingdom of God. 

The high-water mark of religion in human his- 
tory is recorded in these writings. To enter into 
the spirit of these writings is to feel the force of 
the free, full tides of ethical and spiritual life 
which rose, as never before nor since, in the dawn- 
ing day of Christianity. The flow of such a force 



72 THE REAL BIBLE. 

within tlie individual soul and through society has 
been the power of the New Testament in Chris- 
tendom. 

8. This organic growth of a national religion into 
a catholic ideal, not without parallels elsewhere, is, hoiv- 
ever, unique in respect to the conditions for a truly 
Universal Beligion. 

The scene of this evolution is not the heart of 
the East, as in Buddhism, but the meeting point 
of East and West. Palestine is the race centre of 
the earth. Camels unload in Jerusalem the goods 
laden upon them in thd seats of the most ancient 
empires ; and on her pebbly beaches the Medi- 
terranean rolls, bearing the commerce of Eu- 
rope. Behind Judea lies the past, before it opens 
the future. Its Race-Man came at the epoch 
when, first in history, the East and West were 
brought together under one empire and opened to 
the free interchange of thought. And when we 
analyze the religion of the Christ, grown in this 
central land and coming to the birth in this cen- 
tral period, we find that it holds, alone on earth, 
the elements of each race-religion in well propor- 
tioned combination. 

No eastern religion, Buddhism not excepted, 
appears to contain conceptions that satisfy the 
western mind. The religion of the Christ, how- 
ever, can be shown to hold whatever ideas and 
ideals make vital the great race-religions of the 



THE REAL BIBLE, 73 

East. It is as many sided as humanity, and pre- 
sents a family face to every people. It takes up the 
ideas and ideals of other religions, disengages and 
deposits whatever in them is temporal and cir- 
cumstantial, preserves whatever is essential and 
eternal in them, combines these vital elements 
with the polar truths needful to their wholesome- 
ness, and crystallizes ethical and spiritual religion 
into perfect forms, forms capable of translation 
into the idioms of every race of earth. This re- 
ligion of the Christ is the one religion which to- 
day holds the promise and potency of further 
evolution, in the progressive civilization of man- 
kind on which it is enthroned. 

9. Of the literature of the people through whom 
came this organic evolution of the Jceystoning religion 
of earth what can we say hut that it records a real rev- 
elation, coming through genuine personal inspirations 
from on high ! 

Revelation is the opposite aspect of the mystery 
which we call discovery ; the uncovering of that 
which was hidden; the unveiling of that which was 
not known ; the coming on of truth into the light 
wherein man can see it. " Discovery " expresses the 
human effort by which truth is thus uncovered and 
found out. "Revelation" expresses the divine effort 
which lies back of all human aspirations and en- 
deavors ; as the Spirit within man stirs him up to 
seek for Truth, flashes in upon his mind strange 
4 



74 THE REAL BIBLE, 

hints of where and how she is to be found, allures 
him onward with the mystic whispers of her voice, 
until at length he stands upon the mount of vision 
whence her holy form is seen, and cries — " I have 
found her ! " 

To him who believes in a Spirit of Truth, guid- 
ing men into all truth, the growth of ethical and 
spiritual religion into perfect form in Jesus Christ 
is a real revelation. It is the oncoming of the 
Light which lighteth every man that is in the 
world; the dawning of the day of earth on the 
hills of Judea, over which has risen the Sun of 
Righteousness with healing in His wings, 

This revelation came not to the mystic "man 
writ large " we call society, direct from heaven in 
abstract form. It came to individual men, strug- 
gling for larger light and nobler life, and breathing 
their higher spirit on their fellows. Religion is 
always life, the experience of souls. We can name 
the individuals through whom each important ad- 
vance was made. The greater souls who led 
the worship of the host welcoming the rising 
Light, thrilled with the vibrations of a voice 
deeper and holier than the voice of man. The 
lesser souls who formed the chorus of this anthem 
of The Dawn thrilled each alike with this mystic 
sense of God. That which we must aver of every 
truth discovered or revealed, of every knowledge 
needful to man and won by man ; that which we must 
affirm as the only rational interpretation of the 



THE REAL BIBLE, 75 

mysterious suggestions rising below the conscious 
thoughts of man, and prompting to noblest bene- 
dictions on the race ; that we must, with deepened 
awe, say of the holiest truths shown to the human 
soul, — Inspired ! 

With sincere and reverent confession we must 
say then in the words of Holy "Writ : 

"Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy 
G-host." " Every Scripture profitable for teaching, for reproof, 
for correction, for instruction in righteousness is God-inspired." * 

The consciousness and experience of Israel could 

not have found fitter expression than in the words 

of our great seer : 

* ' I conceive a man as always spoken to from behind, and unable 
to turn his head and see the speaker. In all the millions who 
have head the voice, none ever saw the face. That well-known 
voice speaks in all languages, governs all men ; and none ever 
caught a glimpse of its form. If the man will exactly obey it, 
it will adopt him, so that he shall not any longer separate it 
from himself in his thought ; he shall seem to be it, he shall be 
it. If he listen with insatiable ears, richer and greater wisdom 
is taught him, the sound swells to a ravishing music, he is borne 
away as with a flood, he is the fool of ideas, and leads a heavenly 
life. But if his eye is set on the things to be done, and not on the 
truth that is still taught, and for the sake of which the things 

* The Old Testament is a record of the growth of human in- 
telligence in relation to the Deity — of the revelation made by 
Spirit to spirit. When therefore God is described as speaking 
to man, he does so in the only way in which He who is a Spirit 
can speak to one encompassed with flesh and blood ; not to the 
outward organs of sensation, but to that intelligence which is 
kindred to Himself the great Fountain of knowledge. — David- 
son: Introduction to the Old Testament, i. 233. 



76 THE REAL BIBLE. 

are to be done, then the voice grows faint, and at last is but a 
humming in his ears." * 

We have thus seen in the Bible an ancient and 
noble literature, the literature of a noble race, the 
literature supremely influencing and enriching 
Christian civilization ; demanding, therefore, our 
rational reverence, as constituting a truly Sacred 
Book. 

We have seen in the Old Testament the litera- 
ture of the people of religion, commissioned with 
its normal evolution ; writings charged with deep 
religiousness ; the records of the various moods 
and tenses through which religion grew continu- 
ously and insistently toward perfection, in an 
organic process watched and directed by a Higher 
Power than man. We have seen in the New Tes- 
tament the record of the realization of this long- 
sought aim of the people of religion ; the story of 
the Divine Man, who breathed religion out into 
perfection, and the writings that depict the body- 
ing around Him of the Universal Xlhurch, the 
Church in whose truth and life is growing the re- 
ligion of the future, " the Christ that is to be." 

The fuller knowledge of our age, in evanishing 
the unreal Bible restores the real Bible. It is the 
record of the visioning and embodiment of the 
Human Ideal, the Divine Image — The Christ. It 
is the Providentially prepared Hand Book of re- 
ligion, in whose rkji and varied phases of ethical 

— \ -^ 

* Emerson : Miscellanies, p. 200. 



THE BEAL BIBLE. 77 

and spiritual thought all men may find the nour- 
ishment they need. It is the spiritual reality our 
fathers rightly felt, but wrongly expressed, when 
they called it as a whole The Word of God. It 
holds the words proceeding from out of the mouth 
of God on which man liveth. It bodies in " letters " 
The Word of God, embodied in the flesh in Jesus 
Christ the Lord. It records a real revelation. 
This revelation, however, denies no other revela- 
tion. It affirms the fact of the withdrawal of a veil 
in each new knowledge won ; the fact that man has 
felt in calling the new knowledge a discovery ; and 
it interprets this unveiling as Tennyson has learned 
of it to do : 

" And out of darkness- come the hands 
That reach through nature, moulding man." 

These books are the products of a real inspiration. 
This inspiration, however, denies no other inspira- 
tion. It interprets the sense of a higher than 
human influence in the noblest searchers afier 
truth, throughout the world, in every action of the 
intellect. It affirms the validity of that conscious- 
ness.* 

The revelation in the Bible is the Light of God 

*"To hear people speak," said Goethe, "one would almost 
believe that they were of opinion that God had withdrawn into 
silence since those old times, and that man was now placed quite 
upon his own feet, and had to see how hCcould get on without 
God and his daily invisible breath."— Conversations, March 
11, 1832, 



78 THE REAL BIBLE. 

* 

which streams through it, making it a " lamp unto 
our feet." The inspiration in the Bible is the life 
of €rod breathing through it into man, " and he be- 
comes a living soul." The book which, above all 
others, reveals God to man, he must call the su- 
preme revelation of God. The book which, above 
all others, inspires the life of God in man, he 
must call the most inspired of God. 

If, then, any one asks me how he may know 
that there is a revelation in the Bible, I tell him 
to walk in its light, and see what it reveals. If any 
one asks me how I know that the Bible is in- 
spired, I answer him in Mr. Moody's words : 

"I know that the Bible is inspired, because it ' inspires me.' " 



III. 



Zhc wrong uee of the Bible, 



" God, then, is quite simple and true, both in word and deed ; 
neither is He changed Himself, nor does He deceive others — 
neither by visions, nor discourses, nor the pomp of signs. 

* # # x When any one alleges such things as these 
about the gods, we must show disapproval, and not grant them 
the privilege of a chorus ; neither should we suffer teachers to 
employ them in the training of youth — if, at least, our guar- 
dians are to be pious and divine men." 

Plato : The Republic ; Book II. 

' ' This, it seems, is the modern method of coming to inquire 
of the oracles of God ; by this process they become a light to 
our feet, a lamp to our path! Accept the book as a whole, and 
then treat all the portions of it just as you like. Confess all 
its words to be the words of the Lord, and then you may your- 
self be lords over them, and may perform moral miracles by 
turning the bread of life into stones for casting at your enemies. ,, 
Maurice : What is Revelation, p. 475. 



III. 
Zhc wrong use of tbe Bible, 



Every Scripture Inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for re- 
proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.— 2 Timothy, 
iii., 16. 



[HE Unreal Bible is fading upon the vision 
of our age. You have probably all per- 
ceived this more or less clearly. I have uttered 
the conviction which many of you have held in 
secret with misgivings and self-reproaches, and 
have shown you some of the many reasons why, 
as it seems to me, this view can no longer be held 
by men of open minds. The Real Bible is as yet 
-vaguely seen, and, therefore, its power is feebly felt. 
According to their natures men are indulging in flip- 
pant flings at a vanished superstition, or grieving 
silently over the disappearance of the ancient light 
which ruled the night of earth. I have sought to 
clear your vision of the new moon rising upon us, 
the same holy light God set in the heavens of old, 
though changed in the altered atmosphere of earth. 



82 THE WKONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

I propose now to translate the generalities of the 
previous sermons into some practical applications. 
I want to-day to make more distinct certain wrong 
uses of the Bible which grow out of the old view of 
it; wrong uses from which great mischiefs have 
come to the cause of true religion, and great trouble 
to individual souls ; abuses which fall away in the 
light of a more reasonable understanding of the 
Bible. The Bible viewed as a book let down from 
heaven, whose real " author " is God, as the West- 
minster Catechism affirmed ; a book dictated to 
chosen penman and written out by their amanuenses 
under a direction which secured them against error 
on every subject of which they treated ; a book thus 
given to the world to be an authoratitive and infal- 
lible oracle for human information on all the great 
problems of life — naturally calls for uses which, 
apart from this theory, are gross and superstitious 
abuses. 



It is a wrong use of the Bible to set it in its 
entirety before all classes and all ages. 

On the old view of the Bible no man might dare 
to omit portions of it in public reading or home in- 
struction. The horrible atrocities and brutal lusts 
of the early Hebrews, and the coarsenesses of their 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 83 

later days, as unbearable by modern ears as the 
rough talk of Shakespeare's ladies, had all to be 
read to mixed assemblies of young men and maidens ; 
and be read with blushing face by the pure mother 
to the purer children at her knees. For us, who 
see the Bible in its true light, there is no necessity 
for a minister to offend against the taste of a 
refined age, or for a mother to introduce the un. 
soiled soul of her child to evil, by reading straight 
through the successive chapters of the Bible. It 
has been left for Protestant piety to excel Romanists 
and Jews in superstition. The Church of Rome, as 
you know, discourages the use of the Bible by her 
laity, erring in the other extreme. The Jewish 
rabbis had a saying that no one should read the Can- 
ticles before he was thirty years of age. If you fol- 
low the public readings of the Bible in this church 
from your own Bibles, you must often appreciate 
the relief this liberty of omission brings. Use the 
Bible in this way w T ith your children at home. Who 
would think of an indiscriminate use of the original 
Shakespeare ? Stage managers cut him so freely for 
rendering before grown up folk as to have made 
another Shakespeare. He who cares for his child- 
ren's innocence will set before them an expurgated 
edition like that of Rolfe. So we should use at 
home such an expurgated edition of the Scriptures 
as "The Child's Bible," published by Cassel, 
Petter & Galpin, of London. No timid soul need 



84 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

fear that imprecation in the last chapter of the 

Revelation : 

If any man shall take away from the words of the hook of this 
prophecy God shall take away his part out of the hook of life. 

That sounds like the ruling passion, strong in 
death, of the Son of Thunder, who in youth asked 
if he should call down fire from heaven upon a 
hamlet which did not welcome Jesus, and was well 
rebuked for his zeal by the gracious Master. It 
is part of the human weakness through which the 
voice of God speaks, taking its tone from the de- 
fects of the instrument. This imprecation had 
reference, in all probability, solely to the copyists, 
against whose carelessness the author sought to 
guard himself by an awful threat. It certainly had 
reference to this book alone. Not until long after- 
wards did the Church determine what books were 
to enter the canon of the New Testament, and in 
what order they were to stand. That order placed 
the Revelation as the last book in the canon, and thus 
made this threat appear to cover the whole Bible.* 

* Our advancing knowledge of the early portions of the Bible is clear- 
ing its offensive portions of the grossness which characterized them as 
literal histories, by resolving them into nature-myths, or into social tra- 
ditions, symbolical stories of casuistry, "token- tales," whose original 
meaning had been lost by the time they were committed to writing. 

Every school-boy knows how the worst stories of the Greek gods and 
goddesses lose their immorality as seen to be parables of nature's pro- 
cesses, myths, whose poetry had exhaled in the course of time. Gold- 
z*her's " Mythology Among the Hebrews," shows the mythic character 
of many of these revolting Jewish stories, though his theory carries him 
off his feet. "Fenton's " Early Hebrew Life," brings out the social and 
casuistical origin of many of these traditions as decisions,, "Judgments," 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 85 

II. 

It is a wrong use of the Bible to accept its utter- 
ances indiscriminately as the words of God, to quote 
every saying of every speaker in its pages, or every 
deed of every actor in its histories as expressing to 
us the mind of God. 

Such use of the Bible is thoughtlessly common. 
Some time ago before going into a church in 

of the village elders and priests upon cases of conduct, thrown into the 
form of imaginary stories to make them realistic and ensure their pre- 
servation. " In this way, various dubious points of primitive morality 
and politics were governed ; and the stories which enshrine them stand 
to primitive life in much the same relation as do collections of precedents 
to modern lawyers, and dictionaries of cases of cod science to father con- 
fessors." (p. 81) 

But, as these aspects of such traditions as Lot and his daughters, 
Judah and Tamar, &c, cannot be divined without interpretation, they 
should be omitted from our children's Bibles. 

My suggestion of an expurgated Bible, on which so many hard criti- 
cisms have been passed, seemed to me innocent enough, since most sen- 
sible people have been in the habit of expurgating the Bible for them- 
selves, in home readings and in the readings in the churches. This is 
what Plato thought of such stories in the sacred book of the Grecians : 

"Whatever beautiful fable they may invent, we should select,, and 
what is not so, we should reject : and we are to prevail on nurses and 
mothers to repeat to the children such fables as are selected, and fashion 
their minds by fables * * * For though these things were true, yet I 
think they should not be so readily told to the unwise and the young, 
but rather concealed from them. As little ought we to describe in 
fables, the battles of the giants and other many and various feuds, both 
of gods and heroes, with their own kindred and relatives ; but if we would 
persuade them that never at all should one citizen hate another, and 
that it is not holy, such things as these are rather to be told them in 
early childhood ; and the poets should be obliged to compose consistently 
with these views * * * Young persons are not able to judge what 
is aliegory and what is not, but whatever opinions they receive at such 
an age are wont to be obliterated with difficulty, and immovable. Hence 
one would think, we should of all things endeavor, that what they should 
first hear be composed in the best manner for exciting them to virtue." 

" Republic," Book II. 



86 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

whose service I was asked to participate, I ventured 
to show some slight hesitancy in using certain 
Psalms which were set down in the Psalter for the 
day. When asked, why, I mildly answered that I 
could not request a Christian congregation to join 
with me in singing, after the embittered Jews in 
Babylon : 

Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom, in the day of Jerusalem- 
How they said, "Down with it! down with it! even to the ground.' 
Oh, daughter of Babylon, who art to he wasted, Happy shall he be 
that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be that 
taketh thy little ones and throweth them against the stones. 

Nor could I ask the people to unite in praying : 

Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb ; yea, all their princes as Zeba 
and Salmana. 

I had in mind the fate of Oreb and Zeeb and of 
Zeba and Salmana, splendidly brave fellows even 
in their death, as told in the seventh and eighth 
chapters of Judges, where you can learn what sort 
of prayer was this of those savage Jews. Naturally, 
as I thought, I objected to voicing such heathen im- 
precations in the nineteenth century of the era of 
the Prince of Peace. My good friend, with a look 
of amazement, replied, " Why, these Psalms are in 
the Bible." That ended the question for him. 

This incident is typical of a vast quantity of 
wrong uses of the Bible. Thus our American 
slaveholder read that ' precious ' word of the 
ancient tradition, "Cursed be Ham," and smoothed 
his troubled conscience. He had the sanction of 
the Bible for the curse plainly upon Africa. He 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 87 

was fulfilling the Divine will in breeding black 
cattle for the auction block. Piety and profit were 
one, and godliness had great gain, and some con- 
tentment also. Thus the extermination of the 
Canaanites, for which the Hebrews pleaded long 
after the Divine order, and for which they had 
substantial warrant in Destiny's determination to 
rid the land of these corrupting tribes and make 
room for the noble life Israel was to develop, has 
been the stock argument of kings and soldiers for 
their bloody trade. Thus poor human consciences 
have been sorely hurt and troubled as men have 
read, in stories such as those of Jael and Sisera and 
Jacob and Esau, of acts which their better nature 
instinctively condemned. They have felt them- 
selves arraigning the Bible and suspecting God. 

If indeed the Bible is a book let down from the 
skies, of which God can be called the ' author,' then 
all such uses of it may be correct enough, and in 
those dark and savage words and deeds I may be 
obliged to find the words of God and the deeds He 
holds up to our admiration and imitation ; though I 
do not see that such a use is a necessity, even on 
this theory. Fancy a man quoting Shylock when 
he pleads for his bond, or Iago's devilish innuendos 
against Ophelia's purity, as showing what Shake- 
speare liked or what he would have us imitate ! 
" These are the words of Shakespeare ! " Yes, but 
of Shakespeare's Shylock, Shakespeare's lago. 

If, however, the Old Testament is the national 



88 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

library of the Jews, I must expect to find all sorts of 
early Jewish notions, in ethics and religion, bodied 
in the words of the speakers they introduce, and the 
deeds of the men of whom they tell the tales. 

If the Bible is the record of a real revelation 
which came in the spirits of ancient men, through 
the historic growth of conscience and reason ; and 
if these books are the literature embalming that 
growth of a people out of ignorance and supersti- 
tion into the light of pure ethics and spiritual relig- 
ion ; then I must look to find all sorts of crudities 
and crassnesses in the representation of God, and 
all phases of unmoral and immoral life, as parts of 
the error and imperfection out of which they were 
educated. These deeds and words are the mile- 
stones in the path of progress by which Judaism 
reached Christianity., If the individual is to repro- 
duce the story of the race, as our wise men tell us, 
then these words and deeds are in the Bible to carry 
us through the same course of education ; to exercise 
our consciences in discriminating right from wrong, 
and to lead us to grow out of such conceptions and 
desires toward the spirit of Christ. In a cruise last 
summer we dropped anchor in a lovely little out-of- 
the-way harbor of Buzzard's Bay, which proved to 
be near Pocasset ; where, not long ago, a pious man, 
reading the Hebrew tradition of Abraham and 
Isaac, as a real command of the Most High, and 
having this word of the Lord borne in on his mind. 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 89 

as spoken to himself, murdered his child in sacri- 
fice to God — no angel interfering to stay his knife. 
He simply made a reductio ad absurdum of this 
use of the Bible.* 



in. 



It is a wrong use of the Bible to accept every- 
thing recorded therein as necessarily true. 

If the historians were simply the amanuenses of 
the Infinite Spirit, then of course they could not 
have erred in anything they recorded. If they were 
ordinary writers, trying to tell the story of their 
peoples' growth; searching court archives, state 
annals, old parchments of forgotten writers, con- 
sulting the traditions of town and village, using 
their material in the best way their abilities en- 
abled them to do ; using all to teach virtue and 
religion, for which alone they were specially 
qualified of God; then all questions of histo 
rical accuracy are beside the mark. Nothing in 
their inspiration guarantees their historical accuracy ; 
their philological learning in using ancient poetic 
language, or their critical judgment in detecting 

* How then are we to know what words and deeds express the mind 
of God, are words of the Lord, examples He presents for our imitation? 
By the mind of God manifest in * the express image of His person ? ' All 
morality and religion is to he tried hy 'the mind which was in Christ, ' 
'the spirit of Christ which dwelleth in us.' 



90 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

exaggerations. Are we to wait anxiously upon the 
latest Assyrian tablets or the freshest Egyptian 
mummy to confirm our faith that God has spoken 
to the spirit of man ? Are we to quake in our shoes 
when a few ciphers are cut off from the roll of Israel's 
impossible armies ? If much that we read as literal 
history turns out legend and myth, are we to find a 
painful alternative between a blind credulity and as 
blind a skepticism ? We follow this same re-reading 
of Roman and Grecian story untroubled, and see the 
heroes of our childhood turn into races and sun- 
myths without calling the Muse of History a fraud. 
Has it been such comfort to us to read the doings 
of Samson as actual history, slaying a thousand 
men with the jawbone of an ass, tying fire-brands to 
the tails of three hundred foxes, etc., that we should 
resent the translation of this impossible hero into 
the Semitic Hercules, a solar myth? Or if, perchance, 
the historian accepted from remote antiquity the ac- 
counts of great deeds and striking events, as they 
were told at the camp fires of the Hebrew nomads, or 
in the merry makings of the Palestinian villages, with 
an ever growing nimbus of the marvelous gathering 
around them ; and if thus impossible marvels are re- 
ported to us soberly, are we to be compelled to accept 
them uncritically or re j ect the Bible altogether ? The 
Bible itself points us to the interpretation of such le- 
gends. We have some histories written by the actors 
in the scenes narrated. Nehemiah and Ezra, leaders 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 91 

in the most important movement of Hebrew history 
after the migration led by Moses, left accounts of 
their work from their own pens. In such a crucial 
epoch as that of the restoration of the Jews to their 
native land, after the dispersion in Babylonia, we 
might expect to find miraculous interpositions on 
behalf of the chosen people, if they are to be found 
anywhere. But no tale of miracle adorns their simple 
pages. No other old Testament history, written by 
the actors in its scenes, tells of miracles. Such 
stories are found in the traditions written down 
long after the events narrated, by men who knew 
nothing of the facts at first hand. Exceptions to 
this rule occur alone in such startling events as 
the mysterious calamity that befell Sennacherib; 
which strongly impressed the imagination of the 
people and naturally gave rise to exaggerations that 
we can no longer resolve. 

Perhaps Elisha's iron axe head did swim upon 
the water. I am prepared to believe almost any- 
thing after our spiritualistic mediums, and their ex- 
posers. Whether it did or did not concerns me no 
whit. I shrug my shoulders and read on. I cannot 
make out the historical fact which was at the basis 
of the Red Sea deliverance ; nor do I care much to 
make out this or any other Old Testament miracle. 
If I felt obliged to accept literally these stories, or to 
lose my faith in the voice of God which speaks 
through the men of the Bible I should care greatly. 



92 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

In the true view of the Bible I am delivered from 
solicitude about these traditions, and am under no 
constraint of credulity. Those who can believe the 
story of Elisha and the bears, or of Elijah's ascension 
into heaven, may; those who cannot, need not; and 
both alike should reverently read their Bibles, not 
for these tales of wonder, but for the still small voice 
of the eternal spirit sounding through holy lives and 
holier aspirations, until He came whose life was the 
Word of God, the Wonderful.* 

IV. 

It is a wrong use of the Bible to consult it as a 
heathen oracle for the determining of our judgments 
and the decision of our actions. 

The pagans, even such grand old pagans as the 
Romans, before undertaking any important action 
would solemnly consult the auspices. Men with rea 

*In what Is said above there is no positive denial intended of the Old 
Testament miracles. We are in no position to deny them. The point 
is simply that they are not bounden on us in any reasonable and 
reverent recognition of a real historical revelation in the Old Testament, 
and need trouble no one who cannot receive them. The miracles of 
Christ, when reduced to the wonders reported by the conjoint testimony 
of the synoptics,— i.e., to the common tradition of the early church, 
stand apart from all other Scripture miracles ; having" a reasonable and 
natural character as the powers of such a personality, and coming 
within the ken of our visions of possibility. They are imaged in the 
well attested powers of rare men. They appear as in no wise violations 
of law, but as the manifestations of nature's laws and forces worked by 
the normal man, having 'dominion' over the earth. "The wise soul 
expels disease." 



THE WJRONG CTSE OF THE BIBLE. 93 

son given them of God would stand anxiously around 
the steaming entrails of a bird, to find out whether the 
fates were propitious to their undertaking. Great 
generals would open or delay a campaign according 
to the intestinal revelations of a goose. Intelligent 
people use the Bible in some such way. When at a loss 
how to proceed, instead of calmly consulting their own 
judgments and the judgments of their wisest friends, 
and then acting like reasonable beings, men and wo- 
men will open their Bibles at random, let their eyes 
rest on the first verse which arrests their attention, 
and accept any possible bearing on the question in 
hand as the voice of God. The journals of John 
Wesley and other eminent men contain examples of 
this abuse of the Bible. I call it an abuse, for such 
action degrades the Bible to the level of a heathen 
oracle. Isaiah, like all the great prophets, habitually 
contrasted the true and the false communications of 
of the Divine will by the test of the reasonableness 
of their manifestations. The real prophet heard 
the voice of God, not so much in dreams and visions, 
in the " peepings and chirpings " of the oracles, as in 
the calm and sober working of his mind, illumined 
from on high. The oracle was the antithesis of the 
prophet. The oracle represented unintelligent, un- 
reasonable, magical means of getting at a desired 
knowledge. The prophet represented the intelligent? 
reasoning, natural means of getting at that know- 
ledge ; the lighting of that candle of the Lord which 



94 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

is the spirit of man. In the profound double signi- 
ficance of the original, the Logos is the Word or the 
Reason. The Word of God which comes to man is 
the Divine Reason, of which each human reason is a 
ray. To train and use that reason in all our 
exigencies, humbly looking up to the Eternal 
Reason to let the light in us be pure and clear, is 
the way to hear the Word of God. 

To consult the reason of the holy men of old on 
themes whereon they were qualified to speak is 
rational and right. To make of their writings a 
new oracle whose mysterious meanings we are to 
guess, as the ancient Greeks puzzled over the mes- 
sages of the Delphic shrine, is to revive Paganism 
in Christianity. " No prophecy is of any private 
interpretation." No passage in the Bible was 
written, centuries ago, with reference to your 
private affairs. All that is there written concerned 
men and affairs of distant days. The principles 
there applied will help you now, if you will take 
the trouble to search for them, since principles do 
not change with the fashions. 



It is a wrong use of the Bible to go to it, as the 
heathen went to their oracles, for divination of the 
future. 

The pagan oracles were the shrines of a Power 
sought for the forecasting of events. The inspira- 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 95 

tion of an oracle was proven by the success of its 
predictions. In the same way men have turned 
to the. Bible as a sort of sacred weather bureau, 
a book which, if we could only interpret its 
mystic utterances, would tell us what things were 
going to happen upon the earth. I remember 
an eloquent Irish divine who came to this country 
on a great mission a number of years ago. His 
first sermon was on Ezekiel's vision by the Chebar. 
He said that this was the age of science, and that 
such a marvel as science could not have escaped the 
vision of the prophets. This mystic creature which 
the prophet saw, with wheels, whose appearance 
was like burning coals of fire, which turned not as 
it went, and so on, was — the locomotive ! This 
folly was only more undisguised than the mass of 
the lucubrations called Prophetic Studies. 

Let any political crisis occur, and some sage will 
write a book showing how Daniel had foretold this 
issue of diplomacy. I have not forgotten the 
learned tracts and essays called forth by the 
fascination Louis Napoleon exercised upon the 
imaginations of half -educated people ; all proving 
beyond a doubt that he was the mystic man of sin, 
the Anti-Christ in whom history was to culminate. 

America, the restoration of the Jews to Palestine, * 
and the Church of Home especially inspire, at 
present, these crazy conjectures. They ought all to 
issue from Bedlam. 



96 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

This mad and maddening use of what, rightly read, 
are noble and instructive books, grows out of a 
misunderstanding of what were the functions of 
Hebrew prophecy. 

Prophecy has been taken as a synonyme for 
prediction. There is not much verbal difference 
between foretelling and f orthtelling, but there is a 
vast difference for the purposes of religion. Taking 
prophecy as the synonyme of foretelling, the es- 
sential function of the prophets became predicting. 
They were supposed to have been busy in fore- 
casting the things which should come to pass in 
the far future. The success of these long-range 
predictions was the demonstration of their being 
charged with miraculous powers. The prophecies 
constituted the chief evidence for the supernatural 
character of the Bible. Of course, with this 
theory in the mind of the church, a predictive 
character would be read into everything capable 
of bearing it ; and the history of the Hebrews, the 
eloquent orations of their great statesmen, the 
pious longings of their hymn writers, became 
mystic anticipations of everything in the heavens 
above and the earth beneath. 

But Hebrew prophecy never was the synonyme 
for prediction. It meant forth-telling. The prophets 
were " men of the spirit," whose pure nature mir- 
rored the supreme laws of earth, the moral laws; 
whose intuitions made application of those law T s to 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 9? 

the policies of statecraft, and enabled them to divine 
the issues of the stirring events amid which they 
lived. Their glory is that they saw above the brute 
force of great empires the might of right, and dared 
to vision its triumph, and that history has verified 
their moral insight. But they chiefly spake, as the 
author of The Revelation declares of his prophecy, 
"of things which must shortly come to pass" upon 
the earth. Their horizon bounded a very nigh fut- 
ure; the approach of Syrian, Assyrian, Egyptian in- 
vaders, the overthrow of Jerusalem, etc. 

In these predictions they were often mistaken ; 
nearly as often in error as in the right. We 
seldom hear of these unfulfilled prophecies, but 
they are in your Bibles. They should teach you, 
that which the prophets tried so hard to teach their 
own cotemporaries, that the essential distinction of 
the true prophet . was not that he predicted the 
future, for this they scornfully left to the false pro- 
phets, the oracles of the pagan Jews, but that they 
forthtold the inner mind and will of God, read the 
'laws mighty and brazen 5 which constitute the 
essential nature of the Most High and hold -the 
supreme felicity of man. I believe I know of no one 
passage of the prophets which can be certainly 
said to point to any event beyond the near future 
of the writer. Only in so far as they spoke 
of the ideal forces, of ethical victories, did they 
launch out upon the far future. 



98 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

But you say, Do not the Old Testament prophets 
surely point on to Christ? I answer both No, and 
Yes. Of any mere literal prediction of the events 
of His life I know none. The many passages 
that have been made to read like predictions of 
His miraculous birth, His sale for thirty pieces 
of silver, and so on, refer to personages and ex- 
periences in the time of the writers. Isaiah ex- 
pressly says this about the Virgin — that is, the 
young bride — who was to conceive and bear a son. 
Before he should be able to distinguish right from 
wrong the relief of Jehovah to Israel would appear. 
The passages which seem to our eyes, looking 
through orthodox spectacles, to have this predictive 
character, lose it in a more exact translation. 

It is doubtless true that the Gospels make many 
such applications of Old Testament words, adding 
to their record of minute incidents — " That it might 

be fulfilled which was spoken by saying." 

But the Gospels, as we now possess them, have been 
slowly fashioned by the labor of many hands, work- 
ing over the tradition which gradually shaped itself 
out of the reminiscences of multitudes of men and 
women. Pious Jews, trained in this Babbinical use 
of their Sacred Scriptures, delighting to make ap- 
plication of ancient mystic sayings to the life of 
their adorableMessiah, read into the Gospel narra- 
tive these fulfillments of prediction. 

This use of the Old Testament lias been pushed 



THE WRONG USE OP THE BIBLE. 99 

to absurdity in learned books over which I have 
patiently toiled. " The Gospel of Leviticus," gave 
me the Hebrew civic and ecclesiastic legislation 
mystified into ' sound evangelical ' symbols. " Christ 
in the Psalms" twisted every heathenish impre- 
cation of the Hebrew hymns into language which 
could be put upon the lips of the dear Lord, and 
turned the bitterest curses into sweet and gracious 
benedictions. 

The culmination of this moon-struck exegesis, as 
far as my knowledge reaches, is in the ancient and 
fantastic reading of the tradition of the escape of 
the spies from Jericho, which gave a young and 
eloquent Bishop of our church a favorite sermon ; 
wherein he showed conclusively that the scarlet 
cord by which Eahab let down her visitors over 
the city wall was a type of the atoning blood of 
Christ ! 

This Chinese puzzle-book of predictions exists no- 
where save in the imagination of its readers. 

There was, however, a most real and substantial 
typifying of Christ through the Old Testament ; but 
it was natural, organic, ethical and spiritual ; in those 
books as first in the lives of the people. The growth 
of the nation onward toward the true Image of God, 
the true Human Ideal ; the travail of the nation 
with the Divine-Human Character which at the last 
came to the birth in Jesus the Christ ; this was a 
mystery of natural, organic evolution, which < must 



100 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

give us pause ' in every shallow denial of a super- 
natural involution in human history. This makes 
true rationalism reverent before c that Holy Thing ' 
born not alone of Mary but of Mary's race, begotten 
plainly of the overshadowings of some Holy Ghost, 
of whom our best judgment is, now as of old, — 
"He shall be called the Son of the Highest." 

The whole history of Israel is a growth of The 
Christ, and that is the abiding wonder of it. 

In such a mystic evolution it may well be, in his- 
tory as in nature, that the organic processes type 
the oncoming form of life ; but to trace these rightly 
there is needed a finer criticism than that which has 
given us the orthodox typology. * 

Let us pause here for to-day. And let us take 
home, as the heart-thought of the morning, an assur- 
ance which may comfort us as we stand under the 
shadow of Christmas. If the dear Christ's throne 
stood on any such flimsy basis of prophecy as men 
have built up beneath it, then, when the underpin- 
nings came tumbling out, as to-day they are doing, 
we might fear that His authority was dropping in 

* So judicious a commentator as Dean Alford, in Ms introduction to 
the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, discussing the vexed question 
of the Daniel-like section in the third chapter, so wholly unlike Paul 
observes : 

"If we have" (in any sense, God speaking in the Bible) "then, of all 
" passages, it is in these, which treat so confidently of futurity, that 
" we must recognize His voice ; if we have it not in these passages, 
u then, where are wetolisten for it at all? "—Greek Testament 111:64. 



THE WRONG CJSK- OF THE $IBLE. 101 

with them ; that no longer we were to call Him 
Master and King ; that criticism had pronounced 
His decheance. But His throne really rests on a 
nation's growth of the human Ideal and Divine 
Image. And, since this nation's growth was on the 
same general lines as the religious and ethical pro- 
gress of other races, His throne rests on no less se- 
cure a foundation than humanity's evolution of the 
human Ideal and Divine Image. Man's best and 
noblest life aspires after an ideal which is the 
Christly character. Man's best and noblest thoughts 
of God fashion a vision which is the God revealed 
in Christ. He is Humanity's " Master of Life." 



IV. 



Zhe wrong use of the Bible, 



<z The Scriptures will be more studied than they have been, 
and in a different manner — not as a magazine of propositions 
and mere dialectic entities, but as inspirations and poetic forms 
of life; requiring, also, divine inbreathings and exaltations in 
us, that we may ascend into their meaning. No false precision, 
which the nature and conditions of spiritual truth forbid, will, 
by cutting up the body of truth into definite and dead morsels, 
throw us into states of excision and division, equally manifold. 
We shall receive the truth of God in a more organic and 
organific manner, as being itself an essentially vital power." 
Horace Bushnell : God in Christ ; p. 93. 

" But, further, the zealots for the Bible as it is, just because 
it is, forget that, in their outcry in behalf of every existing 
book, and paragraph, and sentence, and word in the present 
edition of it, as ' God's Word written/ they are simply begging 
the question, What is ' God's Word written ' ? What is, with- 
out any doubt, a genuine portion of those writings which con- 
tain the message from God ? The question is, in no case, ' Will 
you part with any utterance of God's voice, whether through 
apostle or evangelist ? ' but only, ' Is this particular word, or 
sentence, or passage, truly such an utterance ? Have we good 
grounds for accepting it as such? Nay, have we not over- 
whelming grounds for doubting it to be such ? ' We do right 
to hold fast 'the faith once delivered to the saints/ but the 
more we are determined to be faithful to this faith, just the 
more sedulous and more searching must be our inquiry, Have 
we here this faith in its integrity ? " 

Thomas Griffith, late Prebendary of St. Paul's, London: 
The Gospel of the Divine Life, p. 418. 



IV. 

Zbc wrona mc of tbe Bible. 



M Every Scripture Inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for re- 
proof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness ; that the man 
of God may he perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."— 
2 Tim. ill; 16-17. 

'9TTSE the world as not abusing it " was a great 
^W» principle of the Apostle, which has many 
special applications. One of these comes again be- 
fore us to-day: Use the Bible as not abusing it. 

I proceed to point out some further wrong uses 
of the Bible: 

It is a wrong use of the Bible to go to it as 
an authority in any sphere save the spheres of theo- 
logy and of religion. 

In the traditional view it was an infallible author- 
ity upon every subject of which it treated. 

The Divine Being had prepared a book which 
answered off-hand the questions man's mind natur- 



106 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE, 

ally starts concerning the problems of existence ; a 
book which taught officially how the earth came 
into its present form, how life arose upon it, how 
man was made, how sin entered, how the world was 
peopled, how mankind was to fare upon the earth, 
how the present order was to come to an end, and 
many things beside. To answer authoritatively 
these questions was the raison d'etre of the Bible. 
It laid a solid foundation for a science of life. 
"With the passing away of the unreal Bible all 
reference to it for such information should cease. 
These books, as actual human writings, the studies 
of men of long past centuries, of men having no 
guarantees of infallibility, cannot be expected to 
have anticipated the solution of the great problems 
of knowledge, towards which the human intellect 
has been laboriously working through the genera- 
tions since they were written ; towards whch it is 
still toilsomely striving, content, even now, with the 
cold, grey light as of the dawning day. 

Our truer idea of revelation — the evolution of 
nature and the historic growth of man — forbids such 
a notion of any book. It has plainly pleased the Most 
High that knowledge of these mysteries should come 
to man through his patient, persevering effort after 
truth. Such continued endeavour wins gradually 
better knowledge, and with it better life. This 
process of human discovery is yet more truly a pro- 
cess of the Divine self -revealing. In each and every 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE, 10? 

real knowledge man is learning to know — Goch 
Each truth of science is a manifestation of some- 
what in the Infinite Power in whom we live and 
move and have our being. Had it pleased God to 
have given, centuries ago, a super-natural answer to 
these problems of earth, He would simply have dis- 
missed His children from school, with-held from 
them that noble education which lies in the discip- 
line of study, and, while giving them truth, have 
robbed them of that keenest joy of life, that bene- 
diction richer even than the possession of truth— 
the search for it. 

How indeed, even in the resources of omnipotence, 
could an answer to the earth-problems have been 
framed, which, while coming down to the plane of 
the age of Moses, should have kept level with the 
rise of human knowledge through the climbing cen- 
turies? No, the Bible was not prepared as an Ency- 
clopedia of Knowledge for the successive generations 
of men. Its writers may anticipate the thought of 
ages by profound intuitions, pregnant imaginations, 
visions of the seer, as Plato does. Genius often 
outstrips the plodding feet of generations. But 
genius must not put on the airs of omniscience. It 
must submit its claims to trial by jury. They are 
to stand, if stand they shall, not because they are in 
Genesis or the Republic, but because they prove true. 

When (e. g.) the Biblical writers speak of the 
Creation, the Garden of Eden, the Fall of Man, etc.. 



108 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE, 

they give us their thoughts, the thoughts of their age, 
the thoughts of earlier ages, of greatly gifted minds 
in many ages gathering into an imposing tradition ; 
which, as we now see, came down through successive 
generations of Hebrews, from a remote antiquity in 
which this race had not been thrown off from the com- 
mon Semitic stock. On the baked clay tablets of 
Babylonia we read to-day the same stories. The 
Hebrews worked them over, under the plastic power 
of their religious genius, into the lofty ethical 
and theistic forms in which they stand in Genesis ; 
forms which, rightly read, are parables fresh and 
inspiring now, as when, twenty-five hundred years 
ago, Jewish children listened to them with awe 
beneath the willows by the water courses of 
Babylonia. That most exquisite story of our 
weird Hawthorne, the Marble Faun, is a ver- 
sion of the legend of the Garden of Eden. 
Commingled with these lofty truths we find crude 
notions of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthro- 
pology. How could it be otherwise, bince these 
sciences were embryotic then, or even unborn? 
We hearken, reverently, thankfully, to the philoso- 
phy and poetry of Hebrew, Chaldean and Accadian 
sages and seers, in these profound and subtle para- 
bles of the mysteries which still fascinate us. We 
dismiss the knowledge of nature set forth in these 
legends and myths as the child-sciences of Israel and 
Ohaldea and Accadia. 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 109 

We go to our savans for knowledge of physical 
nature. We make no attempt to reconcile Genesis 
with the Origin of Species. Genesis is no authority 
in science, and The Origin of Species is no auth- 
ority in philosophy, poetry, theology or religion. 

The accounts of man in the dim distance of pre- 
historic times, given in Genesis, belong to the depart, 
ments of the antiquarian, and the philologist ; and 
we trust their story, no matter how it collides with 
the Hebrew traditions. So through every sphere of 
knowiedge upon which the Biblical writers enter, 
outside of their own special spheres, we 
follow them as venerable guides, but as entirely 
fallible authorities, expressing the knowledge of 
their age and race. 

Thus, to take one example from later times, 
St. Paul, in the first epistle to the Corinthians, 
condemns woman's participation in the exercises 
of worship and instruction in the Christian as- 
semblies of Corinth. This judgment is accepted, 
by those who hold to the unreal Bible, as for- 
closing the case of woman versus man in the voca- 
tion of the ministry, in this land and age as in all 
lands and ages. We saw lately the action of this 
theory over in Brooklyn. Though she had the gifts 
and graces of a Lucretia Mott, though her preaching 
were blessed as that of a Miss Smiley, though wo- 
man's temperament seems peculiarly fitted for the 
inspirational influences of the pulpit, yet Nature's 



110 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE, 

ordination must be disowned because Saul of Tarsus 
thought it unseemly for a woman to speak in 
meeting ! He thought it unseemly also, as he 
tells us in the same letter, that woman should appear 
unveiled in public assemblies ; in which you do not 
seem to consider him an authority. Why should 
you defer to him in the one opinion and disregard 
him in the other ? Both opinions formed part of 
his education as a "Jew of the first century of our 
era ; as which he frankly confessed that he regarded 
woman as inferior to man. "We do not consider the 
Jewish physiology and psychology of that age bind- 
ing on us ; and St. Paul's opinion on such a matter 
falls to the ground with it. 

ii. 

It is a wrong use of the Bible, for the pur- 
poses of theology or religion, to give its language any 
other meaning than that vjhich similar language 
would have under similar circumstances. 

People of sound minds do not read poetic lan- 
guage in other books as though it were prose. 
They do not take words thrown off at white heat ; 
crowd them, all molten with feeling, into the 
mould of a Gradgrind understanding ; force them 
to take the form of such matter-of-fact minds ; and 
then, when the emotion is cooled down, and the 
fluent fancies are reduced to stiff, hard prose, say 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. HI 

— " there, that is the exact meaning of this lan- 
guage !" Fancy Shakespeare's impetuous, tumultu- 
ous, riotous imagery treated by such ' criticism ! ' 

Yet that is the sort of treatment which 
many learned pedants call ' expounding the 
Bible P It is with the greatest difficulty that the 
Western mind can rightly read the Eastern's lan- 
guage. We miss the rich aroma of their nectared 
speech, and find only the grounds left. And we 
take these grounds for the true original beverage of 
the gods ! Out of such residuum of poetry, when 
the poesy has exhaled, we make our spiritual food ! 
Poetry petrified into prose — is the real explanation 
to be offered of many an absurdity of Bible-reading. 

A visitor to one of the Shaker communities de- 
scribes the men and women as engaging in the most 
preposterous play of making-believe; performing 
upon imaginary instruments as they marched in 
procession ; going through the motions of washing 
their faces and hands as they surrounded an imag- 
inary fountain ; and, finally, plunging bodily into 
this spiritual fountain, by rolling over on the grass ! 
To an exclamation of surprise at such childish 
doings, answer was made that thus they were be- 
coming as little children, in order to en*er the 
kingdom of heaven ! * 

Luther sat disputing with Zwinglius the doctrine 

* " History of American Socialisms, "—Noyes. —p. 608. 



112 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

of trans-substantiation, and to every argument of 
his rational opponent answered by laying his sturdy 
finger on the words, " This is my body. 5 ' The 
most powerful Church of Christendom bases itself 
upon this prosaic reading of a poetic saying. 

Many a mysterious dogma would simplify itself 
at once by remembering that, in the language of 
the imagination, "the letter killeth, but the spirit 
giveth it life." * 

We are not to rush from this extreme into the 
opposite error and turn into mystical and marvel- 
lous meanings the plain sense of the Biblical 
writers. Imagine the result of putting all sorts of 
mystic glosses on the straight-forward accounts of 
men and things in ordinary writings. Such is in 
reality the folly of turning the sober statements of 
Biblical prose writers into allegories, parables, 
symbols, types; and of finding underneath the 
plainest meanings a double, triple and quadruple 
sense. 

In the hour of Christ's approaching arrest he 
warns his disciples, in His usual figurative manner, 
that they must now learn to provide for themselves; 
since he would shortly be taken from them. " He that 
hath a purse let him take it ; and he that hath no 
sword let him sell his garment and buy one." And 



* " To understand that the language of the BiDle is fluid, passing 
" and literary, not rigid, fixed and scientific, is the first step towards 
" a right understanding of the Bible."— Literature and Dogma ;— p. xii. 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. H3 

his disciples, being very unimaginative folk, or being 
perhaps stupefied with wonder and anxiety by His 
strange words and actions on that night of sad sur- 
prises, said — " Lord, behold here are two swords." 
The Master answered, with a weariness of their ob- 
tuseness that we can feel in the curt reply, u It is 
enough." And the wisdom of the Roman Church 
sees herein a type of the temporal and spiritual 
power of the Papacy ! 

I am solemnly warned against such learned pueri- 
lities every time I turn to my shelves and encounter 
Swedenborg's "Arcana Coelestia." In ten goodly 
volumes he interprets Scripture history after this 
fashion : 

" 'And Rebecca arose' — -hereby is signified an 
" elevation of the affection of truth : 'And her 
" damsels 5 — hereby are signified subservient affec- 
" tions : ' And they rode upon camels ' — hereby is 
" signified the intellectual principle elevated above 
" natural scientifics." ! 

Of all this pious sort of folly we may say with the 
Master—" Enough." 

It is the common mistake which gathers a nim- 
bus of mystic sense around every book excessively 
revered. Thus the Greeks fancied an inner and 
mystical sense in Homer ; and thus Italian profess- 
ors expound the esoteric significance of Dante. 

The fantastic dre ,m of mysterious meanings in the 
Bible must take wings after its kindred fancies of 



114 THE WKONG USE OF THE BIBLE, 

Greeks and Italians, at the touch of a ripening 
literary judgment. One rule holds of all human 
letters. Where there is legend, myth, metaphor, 
or other clear form of poetic fancy, language is to 
be read imaginatively. Otherwise, in the Bible, as 
out of it, the ordinary meaning of words must be 
followed. 



III. 

It is a wrong use of the Bible to construct a 
theology out of it, by the mechanical system of 
proof texts in vogue in the churches. 

With a preconceived system of thought in their 
minds, drawn from the most highly evolved specu- 
lations of the New Testament, men have gone 
through both Testaments ; and whenever they have 
lighted upon a sentence which seemed to coincide 
with this system, it has been torn bleeding from its 
place in a living texture of thought, impaled on 
some one of the " Five Points," and set up in 
the Theological Cabinet, duly labelled " Proof-Text 
of Original Sin," or " Proof Text of Future Punish- 
ment." 

What a monstrosity an ordinary Sunday School 
Scripture Catechism is, with its statements of re- 
ceived doctrines, to which are appended proof-texts 
drawn from Genesis and Isaiah and Paul; i.e., from 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 115 

some pre-historic tradition, from a Hebrew states- 
man's oration and from a Christian apostle's letter. 
It makes no difference what the character of the 
writing from which the sentence is taken. Every- 
thing is grist for this mill. A "judgment" or 
" doom " of the nomadic Hebrews, a burning meta- 
phor from a late poet and a metaphysical proposition 
from an Alexandrian philosopher are jumbled to- 
gether, side by side, as co-equal proofs of the most 
awful doctrines. 

An ancient historian, gathering up the traditions 
of his primitive fore-fathers, records the legend of 
the Flood, in which it is told that 

- " God saw tliat the wickedness of man was great in the earth, 
And that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart 
Was only evil continually." 

The poet who wrote, out of the deep of some ex- 
perience of shameful sin, the pathetic penitential 
hymn, known as the Fifty-first Psalm, said, in the 
c >urse of his self-condemnings : — 

" Behold I was shapen in wickedness, 
And in sin hath my mother conceived me." 

The poet who wrote his unrivaled prophecies amid 
the humiliation of the national exile in Babylonia, 
cried out in one place: — 

"We are all as an unclean thing, 
And all our righteousness are as filthy rags." 

And these mythic and poetic words, true to man's 
abiding sense of evil in his deepest hours, stand to- 



116 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

day in the arsenal of theology as proof -texts of the 
doctrines of original sin and total depravity ! 

Even this folly has been surpassed. Among the 
proverbial sayings of the Jews was one to this 
effect ; 

" If the tree fall towards the South, or towards the North, 
In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be." 

The meaning of such a proverb is surely plain 
enough. Death's action is irrevocable. As it 
meets a man it leaves him. His plans and schemes 
lie as incapable of development as the fallen tree 
is incapable of new sproutings. At the time the book 
of Ecclesiastes was written, the belief in any life 
after death was little known in Israel. This book 
was the work of a thorough pessimist, whose con- 
stant refrain was — Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity. 
It gives no hint of a second life ; and in the absence 
of this faith the present life is to the writer an insolu- 
ble problem. This saying really expressed the pop- 
ular belief that death ended everything. A man falls 
like a tree, and, like a prostrate tree, as he falls he 
lies. 

And lo ! this Jewish proverb is the first proof- 
text generally quoted for the dread doctrine that 
after death there is another life, but that its charac- 
ter is fixed forever by the state of the man at death ; 
the dogma of everlasting conscious suffering in 
Hell! 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. H7 

What Midsummer Night's Dream reasoning, 
turning common-sense topsy-turvy, and treating the 
words of God in the very reverse way from that in 
which all sane people agree to treat the words of 
man ! 

IV. 

It is a wrong use of the Bible to disregard the 
chronological order of its parts in constructing our 
. theology. 

We are not to read the Biblical writers as 
though they were all cotemporaries. They are 
separated by vast tracts of time. The later writers 
stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors and 
see further and clearer. We are not .to view the 
institutions or doctrines of the Bible as though, no 
matter in what period of the development of the 
Hebrew Nation or of the Christian Church they 
are found, they were equally authoritative upon us. 
That would be to say that green apples are as 
good food for us as ripe ones. The time-perspec- 
tive is essential to set any Biblical institution or 
dogma in the true light. 

Romanists and our own Ritualists entrench their 
sacerdotalism behind the priestly system of the 
Jews. As though, because that was once needful 
and serviceable to an ignorant, half heathen 
people, it was still indispensible to us. As though 



118 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

what providence once ordained, providence perpet- 
ually imposed on humanity. Such a rule would 
keep us with our primers always in our hands. 
Progress is marked by the debris of discarded insti- 
tutions, wholesome and necessary once, but incum- 
brances after a time. The whole rationale of sacer- 
dotalism is exploded by this simple common sense 
principle ; and we see in its light the significance 
of Paul's impatient sweeping away of the Law ; of 
the entire ignoring of the sacrifice and the priest- 
hood in the life and teaching of Jesus himself. 

" The liour cometli when ye shall neither in this mountain, 
Nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. God. is spirit ; 
And they that worship must worship him in spirit and in truth." 

Dogmas also must be seen in historical perspec- 
tive. Thus, for example, the doctrine of the 
Second Advent, which still exercises the Christian 
mind, is wholly cleared up as looked at through the 
time- vista. 

We see the progress of the Messianic expectation 
through the centuries immediately prior to the age 
of Christ, in our old Testament books and in the 
Apocryphal writings. In these latter works we see 
it gradually gathering round itself visions of the 
winding up of the present aeon, the renovation 
of the earth, the judgment of the nations, the res 
urrection of the pious dead, and the opening of a 
millenial era in which the Messiah should rule the 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 119 

world from Jerusalem. It would appear to have 
even developed the notion that the Messiah, after 
his appearance on earth, would depart into the 
spirit- world, to consummate his preparation ; and 
would return thence to assume full power. This 
had became thg popular expectation by the Chris- 
tian era. 

When then the early Christians became satisfied 
that Jesus was the Messiah, it followed of necessity 
that they should after his death, say to themselves 
— " He has gone into the heavens to receive his in- 
stitution into the office he has won by his sinless 
life and suffering death. He will come again in the 
clouds with power ; the conquering Messiah." 

This belief seems to have taken shape first in 
Paul's fervid mind. His earlier epistles were full of 
it. His converts became unsettled by it, and in their 
excited expectation of the return of the Messiah 
they neglected their earthly duties ; and Paul hacl to 
caution them against this impatience and cool their 
heated minds. *~ - 

This and other experiences sobered Paul's own 
mind. He found that as year after year came round 
the Messiah did not return. In the rapid ripening 
of thought which went on in the tropical climate of 
his soul, he grew into a more spiritual apprehension 
of Christ. If you read his undoubted letters in 
the order of their writing ; First Thessalonians, 



120 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Romans, 
etc., you will note a steady decrease of reference to 
this topic, until it fades away into a vague vision 
of the dawning day of God ; the absolute assurance 
that Christ would conquer and rule the earth, though 
it might be in the spirit and not in the flesh ; the 
certain conviction of a good time coming though 
beyond his ken. The later light of the apostle cor- 
rected his earlier misapprehensions ; and would cor- 
rect our crude and carnal notions of the second com- 
ing of Christ, if we would only study Paul, as we 
study Turner or Shakespeare, in his ripening 
6 periods. 5 

Were this one principle followed, our popular 
theology would soon reconstruct itself. 

V. 

It is a wrong use of the Bible to cite its authors as 
of equal authority, even in the spheres of theology and 
religion. 

The teachings of any human writing come 
clothed with such authority as the author's name 
lends to it or its intrinsic force wins for it. 

If in the work of an obscure economic writer, of no 
perceptible ability, you come upon the theory that the 
land of a people belongs to the people ; that its passing 
into the absolute ownership of private persons is the 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 121 

basic evil of our civilization ; that t&e nation must re- 
sume the inalienable rights of the people at large, 
in the resources of all wealth, and regulate the indi- 
vidual usufruct of land in the interests of the en- 
tire body politic — you will probably toss the book 
contemptuously from you as the crazy lucubration 
of a fool. 

If in reading John Stuart Mill's Principles of 
Political Economy you come upon this theory, cau- 
tiously broached, you are constrained to treat it 
with the consideration due an acknowledged master 
in this science. If again in the first elaborate 
'<vork of a new author, Progress and Poverty, you 
meet this same theory, boldly laid down as the 
central theme of the book, atftl contended for as 
!he real solution of the persistent problem of paup- 
erism, you are disposed to pass it by unheeded. 
The author's name carries to your mind no prestige 
of tradition. He speaks from no time-honored 
university chair. No array of imposing titles 
hang upon the plain 6 Henry George,' of the title 
page. But you become interested in these brilliant 
pages of genius and follow the author, with grow- 
ing sympathy, to the end. 

You lay the book down, feeling as though a spell 
had been upon you, in which you could form no 
sound judgment. You lay it by accordingly, to take 
it up after some weeks, work over its positions, and 



122 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE, 

find your first impressions confirmed ; to realize that 
here is a work of real, rare power ; an epoch-making 
book, which, if it does not carry your conviction, 
commands your careful consideration. 

Precisely so we are to be affected by the Biblical 
authors. There are writings in the Bible by utterly 
unknown writers. A letter of an obscure author 
cannot come with the weight of a letter from St. 
Paul. There are writings of widely dift rent men- 
tal force. Biblical authors varied in personal power 
as much as other authors. Inspiration cannot do 
away with the limitations of the human individuality. 
It must be modified by its instrumentality. The 
saints are of various orders. Even the diamond 
books which reflect the light of God so brilliantly 
may not be all of first water. We must allow for 
the hues in the less perfect prisms. Were the great- 
est musical genius in the world to sit before the 
key-boards he could not draw from a harmonium 
the notes of a Lucerne organ. The impact of a 
writing on our souls must be proportionate to the 
spiritual and ethical force with which it is charged. 
Everyone recognizes this practically. None of us, 
however orthodox, professes to be as much in- 
spired by Esther as by Job ; by Chronicles as by 
Kings ; by Daniel as by Isaiah ; by Jude as by 
Paul. That simply means that there is not as much 
inspiration in some Biblical authors as in others. 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 123 

No author is always at his best. His work differs. 
The second epistle to the Thessalonians is not .level 
with the epistle to the Romans. The third epistle 
of John, if it be of John, is surely not as highly 
inspired as the first epistle of John. Inspiration 
is plainly a matter of degrees. 

The recognition of this common-sense principle, 
theoretically, would remand the darker doctrines of 
Christianity to such authority as the lower order of 
Biblical writings possess. The terrifying and tor- 
turing teachings of the New Testament are from 
obscure authors, or from the masters in their 
lower moods. The representations of a wrath- 
ful God, of an avenging Christ, of a hell of 
horrors, are found in such epistles as Second 
Thessalonians, whose authorship is uncertain; as 
Jude or Second Peter, about whose authorship and 
date we have only the probability that no apostle 
wrote them, and that they were written after the 
first, fresh inspiration had passed from the church. 
Rabbinical speculations and Greek superstitions 
show themselves at work in the Christian Church.* 
The unquestioned letters of Paul are sunny and 
sweet. In them we see the father of Christian 
Restorationism. If he knows anything of a dark 
side to the resurrection, as he shows elsewhere 

* The revised version calls the attention of English readers to this lat- 
ter influence, in the marginal rendering of "Tartarus" for "Hell" in 
2 Peter, ii : 4. 



124 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

that he does, he leaves it in its own shadows; 
and in the height of this great argument of Corin- 
thians brings to the front only the resurrection 
to life and joy. " Knowing the fear of the Lord 
we persuade men." 

The first epistle of John is true to its favorite 
symbol of the light. There are no clouds in it. The 
God revealed in the greatest writings of the greatest 
authors of the New Testament is Love. The Christ 
they picture is Christus Consolator. The full 
breath of inspiration opens only the upper register 
of notes. The voices of the soul are buoyant, joy- 
ous, hopeful. 

If you are willing to follow the most inspired 
writers, in their most inspired moods, up into the 
heights whither the divine afflatus bore them, you 
will mount above the cloud-level, and leave to those 
who lag after feebler guides on the lower ranges of 
truth, the chill mists that eat into the soul, while 
you rejoice in the light. 

VI. 

It is a wrong use of the Bible to manufacture 
out of it any one uniform system of theology, as 
the fixed and final form of thought in which re- 
ligion is to live. 

Let me define these contrasting terms, so com- 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 125 

monly confounded. Religion is man's perception 
of the Power in whom we live and move and have 
our being, and his emotion towards this power. 
Theology is man's conception of this Power, and 
his thought defined and formulated. 

Religion is man's feeling after God ; theology is 
man's grasp of God. The two are necessarily con- 
nected. They are different forms of one and the 
same force ; the heat and the light which stream 
from God; but the heat and the light are not 
always equal. A worthy thought of God ought to 
sustain any worthy feeling towards Him. It gen- 
erally does so. A heightened thought of God may 
often be found back of a rising flow of feeling 
after Him. More often the emotion precedes the 
conception ; the vague, awed sense of God travails 
till a new thought is born among men. This has 
been the order of development in history. Men 
felt the Divine Power and Presence ages be- 
fore they had learned so much of theology as to 
say — God. The feeling of God — religion — always 
keeps, in healthy natures, far ahead of the- 
olgy — the thought about Him. The deepest re- 
ligion finds no word for the mystery before which 
it bows. Its only thought may be that no thought 
is sufficient . 

" In that nigh hour thought was not." 

Theology, then, as man's thought about God, is 



126 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

necessarily conditioned by man's mind. It is under 
the general limitations of the human intellect, and 
the special limitations of thought in each race and 
age and individuality. It cannot escape these limi- 
tations, expand as they may. A flooding of the 
mind from on high may overflow these embank- 
ments, but they still stand, shaping the flow of the 
fullest tides. The individuality of a great writer 
asserts itself most strongly in his greatest works. 
His deepest inspiration brings out most plainly his 
mental form, just as the drawing of a full breath 
shows the real shape of a man. No possible the- 
ory of inspiration should lead us to look for the 
submergences of the dykes of thought cast up by 
race and age and individuality. 

As a matter of fact, we find no uniformity in the 
theologies of the New Testament writers. Men 
have tried hard to make it appear that there was 
such a unity of thought. Never was more inge- 
nious joiner-work done than in the "harmonies" of 
the New Testament writers. But facts are stub- 
born- things, and in this case have resisted even the 
omnipotence of human ingenuity; as open minds 
have seen, despite the doctors. 

St. PauFs Epistles reveal a theology by no means 
as precise and fixed as is popularly imagined, under- 
going rapid changes, growing with his growth, 
always suffused from the soul with emotions which 



THE WRONG USB OF THE BIBLE. 127 

struggled against the prison bars of thought and 
speech. His intensely speculative mind had furn- 
ished a system of thought into which he built such 
ideas as these : The pre-existence of Christ, as, iji 
some mystic, undefined way, the Head of Human- 
ity ; the sacrificial nature of His death; the justifi- 
cation of the sinner through faith ; the life of 
Christ within the soul, as the Human Ideal; the 
speedy return of Christ in person to reign on earth 
(at least in the early part of his career) ; the resur- 
rection of the pious dead ; the translation of living 
believers; the final victory of goodness over evil; 
and the ending of the mediatorship of Christ, God 
then becoming all in all. 

This was the form which the mystery of God's 
relationship to man took in the mind of this great 
genius, and around which the fiery passion of his 
hunger after righteousness shaped itself. 

In the Epistle of St. James, assuming the tradi- 
tional authorship, how much of this theology can 
you find? The incarnation is nowhere clearly 
stated. The name of Christ occurs but twice. His 
atonement is scarcely mentioned. The prophets 
are held up as examples of patience, under suffer- 
ing, without any reference to Christ. Paul's 
especial doctrine of justification by faith is ex- 
plicitly denied. Of his fellowship with the Gen- 
tiles and his broad humap sympathies, there is 



128 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

nothing whatever. All is intensely Jewish. If 
Paul's theology is orthodoxy, James is dread- 
fully unsound.* u The fundamentals " are all lacking 
I Both Paul and James differ very decidedly 
from the mystic soul who wrote the First Epistle 
of John; and all three differ again, quite as much, 
from the philosopher who wrote the Epistle to the 
Hebrews. How little have either the Apocalypse 
or Jude in common with Paul ! We can no more 
make a uniform theology out of the New Testa- 
ment writers than we can out of Calvinism, Armini- 
anism, Catholicism, and Unitarianism. ' 

These various theologies can be traced to the 
elements making up the individualities of the dif- 
ferent writers. The idiosyncracies of Paul are 
clearly marked. He was a man of strong specula- 
tive mind, of mystic piety, of lofty enthusiasm for 
great ideals, a-hungered after righteousness. A 
Jew and yet a Roman citizen, his education devel- 
oped the two-fold sympathies of an Israelite of the 
dispersion. At the feet of the liberal rabbi, Gam- 
aliel, he learned the curious and mystical lore of 
the rabbins, while drinking in from his Master the 
spirit of freedom. Thrown from a child in con- 
stant contact with the Gentiles of his native city, 
Tarsus, race prejudices had been sapped uncon- 
sciously; while in youth or manhood the wisdom 

*Lutner's strong sense detected his unevangelicalness. 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 129 

and beauty of the Greek genius .had apparently 
been opened to him. 

Paul's personality, fusing the materials of his 
education, and out of them building a body of 
thought around The Christ, explains his theology. 
He reproduces the conceptions of the rabbis, of the 
popular Jewish belief, of Gamaliel, of Tarsus, of 
Athens ; transfigured on the heights of thought to 
which he climbed, in his intense musings over the 
problem of Jesus of Nazareth, while buried away 
in Arabia. 

The small amount of theology in the practical 
Epistle of James is quite as plainly Jewish, of the 
school of the Sages, with a touch of Essenism. 
The theology of the Epistle to the Hebrews shows 
throughout the influences of the philosophy of 
Alexandria. The theology of the introduction to 
the Gospel according to St. John is just as unques- 
tionably this same Alexandrian philosophy, still 
further developed. 

These variant schools of Christian theology, so 
plainly revealing the sources of their variations, 
deny the existence of any one uniform system of 
thought in the New Testament writers, and pro- 
nounce the different systems transient and not final 
forms. 

Whatever the Church may offer us, the New Tes- 
tament offers us no fixed and final body of thought. 



130 THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 

In the Bible, Christian theology is still a soft vase, 
plastic to the touch of each worker upon it. Had 
Paul's fine hand played around it even another 
decade, how different the shape it might have taken. 

With the incoming of a more rational, ethical, 
and spiritual age, we may surely expect a finer 
fashioning of the forms of thought blocked out in 
the New Testament, under the first, fresh inspira- 
tion of the age of Jesus ; into whose larger patterns 
shall be taken up all the truths revealed through 
the various sciences of these rich later ages ; while 
all shall still take on the shape of Him wlio is the 
image of the invisible God. 
11 The Lord lias more truth yet to break forth out of His holy word." 

The true Biblical theology is — Christ himself. 
His thought of God, and not even Paul's thoughts 
about Christ, are to mould 'our thinking. The 
Supreme Son of Man must have had the truest 
thought of God. Two words formulate his the- 
ology, as bodied not in a creed, but in a prayer — 
" Our Father." The earliest, simplest, deepest cry 
of the human after God, now by Him who 
lived its spirit perfectly, the trusting, loving, holy 
Child of the Father, made no longer a sigh, a 
dream, a vision, but a life. " The life was the 
light of men. 55 

That light is the sufficient clue to the dark laby- 
rinth in which we wander wearily. 



THE WRONG USE OF THE BIBLE. 131 

I cannot always make out the face of a Father 
on the stern, harsh Power in whom we live and 
move and have our being. Then I turn to my 
Divine Brother, who, of all the children of men, saw 
deepest into the mystery, and in his far-mirroring 
eyes I read the vision which satisfies me. 

With poor dying Joe, I whisper to myself: 

" * Our Father : ' yes, that's werry good." 



v. 

&l)e IUgf)t Critical lite of il)e Bible. 



" I am convinced that the Bible becomes even more beautiful 
the more one understands it ; that is, the more one gets insight 
to see that every word, which we take generally and make spe- 
cial application of to our own wants, has had, in connection 
with certain circumstances, with certain relations of time and 
place, a particular, directly individual reference of its own." 

Goethe: quoted by M.Arnold in' 'The Great Prophecy of 
Israel's Restoration." 




V. 



&ije &t<tf)t (Critical mt of tj)e iStirfe. 

M God, who at many times and in many manners spake in 
time past to the fathers, by the prophets." — Hebrews, i. 1. 



J HE right use of the Bible grows out of the 
true view of the Bible. 
The Old Testament is the literature of the 
people of religion, in whom ethical and spiritual re- 
ligion grew, through all moods and tenses, toward 
perfection. The New Testament is the literature 
of the movement which grew out of Israel, the 
literature of the Universal Church bodying around 
the Son of Man, in whom religion came to perfect 
flower and fruit. The real Bible is the record of 
this real revelation coming through real ethical 
and spiritual inspirations ; a revelation advancing 
with men's deepening inspirations toward the Light 
which rose in the Life of Jesus Christ our Lord. 

God, who at many times and in many manners spake in time 
past to the fathers by the prophets, hath at the last of these 
days spoken unto us by a Son. 

These speakings of the Divine Spirit in the 
souls of men, at many times and in many manners, 
were articulated, as best was possible, in the writ- 

135 



136 THE EIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

ings of many ages and of many forms. The Bible 
is tlie collection of these writings. They require 
a critical study, as bona fide " letters," before we 
can know the degree of their inspiration, and their 
place in the progressive historic revelation ; before 
we can thus deduce aright the thoughts about God 
out of which we are to construct our theology. 
Concerning this right critical use of the Bible, I 
propose now to offer some practical suggestions. 
Next Sunday I purpose giving you a bird's-eye 
view of the general course of the historic reve- 
lation which led up tothe Christ, the Word of God. 
After which I shall pass on to consider with you 
the pre-eminently right use of the Bible, in which 
our souls humbly hearken for its words proceed- 
ing from out the mouth of God, on which man liv- 
eth ; and on them feeding, grow toward a perfect 
manhood in Christ Jesus. 



Every aid of outward form should be used to make 
these books appear as living " letters " to us. 

The traditional form in which the Bible has 
been given to the people would seem to have been 
devised with a design of robbing its writings of 
every natural charm, as the best means of making 
men feel its supernatural power. The fresh sense 
of " letters " disappears in this conventional form. 
These many books of many ages have been bound 



THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 137 

up together, with the most imperfect classification 
either as t6 period or character. A verse-mak- 
ing machine has been driven through them all 
alike, chopping them up into short, arbitrary, ar- 
tificial sentences, formally numbered in the body 
of the text. The larger divisions into chapters 
have been made in an equally mechanical manner. 
By this twofold system an admirable provision 
has been made for checking the flow of the writ- 
er's thought, and for effectually preventing any 
easy grasp of the natural movement of the book. 
Poetry has been printed as prose ; thereby mar- 
ring its rhythm, concealing its structure, and 
blinding the reader to the dramatic character of 
immortal works of genius. Through the whole 
mass of writings a system of chapter-headings has 
been introduced that ingeniously insinuates into 
the body of these sacred books, as seemingly an 
integral part thereof, a scheme of interpretation 
which possesses now no pepsine power for re- 
solving their contents into spiritual nutriment, but 
rather positively hinders our assimilation of many 
of these books. 

Probably the greatest obstacle to the use of the 
Bible is the senseless form in which custom per- 
sists in publishing it. I know few stronger evi- 
dences of the intrinsic power of these books than 
their continued influence, under conditions that 
would have remanded other books to the topmost 
shelves of the most unused alcoves in our libraries. 



138 THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

We ought to have the different books, or groups 
of books, bound separately ; arranged paragraphic- 
ally like other writings, with the present verse 
divisions indicated, if need be, in the margin ; 
and the poetic structure properly indicated. 
These books should have brief, simple, lucid 
notes ; drawing from our best critics the needful 
information as to their age, authorship, integrity, 
form, scope, obsolete words and idioms, local cus- 
toms, historical allusions, etc. ; with other read- 
ings throwing light upon obscure passages. Each 
book should be thus provided with such a popu- 
lar critical apparatus as accompanies good edi- 
tions of other classics, and as Matthew Arnold 
has prepared for one book, in his primer entitled 
"The Great Prophecy of Israel's Restoration;" 
which is the second section of Isaiah, arranged as 
a " Bible-reading for schools." 

This series of Bible-books should then be 
chronologically arranged, as far as the conclusions 
of the higher criticism will allow; and should 
be bound in uniform style and set in a Bible case, 
preserving thus the unity of the whole. Such an 
edition of the Bible would stimulate a renewed 
resort to it, in which men would re-discover a lost 
literature. 

Until you can procure such an edition, provide 
yourselves with a paragraph Bible, following the 
natural divisions of the writings and maintaining 
their poetic form ; and seek the information you 



THE BIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 139 

may desire in some of the manuals embodying the 

results of the higher criticism. 

- 

II. 

Each writing having an intrinsic unity should, by 
such aids, be studied as a whole. 

Every intelligent Christian ought to have a clear 
conception of the general scope of thought in each 
great Bible-book. Whatever fragmentary use of 
these books for direct devotional purposes maybe 
made, he who would count himself as one of " the 
men of the Bible," ought to know as much about 
them as he knows about his favorite authors. 

"Who that pretends to be a lover of Shakespeare 
is content with a scrappy reading of his immortal 
plays ? To enjoy them fully, even in fragmentary 
readings, he seeks to have a foundation of critical 
knowledge, such as Shakespearian scholars place 
within the easy mastery of any one. After such a 
study of a play he can pick it up in leisure hours 
and see new beauties every time he reads it. How 
many Bible Christians know their Bible thus ? 

What a revelation such a study makes ! It is 
an alchemist's touch, turning many a leaden book 
into finest gold. 

The oldest book, as a whole, in the Bible, is the 
Song of Songs. Attributed by later ages to 
Solomon, it was probably written by some un- 
known author, anywhere from the tenth to the 



140 THE BIGHT CKITICAL USE 0E THE BIBLE. 

eighth century before Christ.* The poem is dra- 
matic in form, though imperfectly constructed ac- 
cording to our canons. Its scenes shift, and its 
speakers change with true dramatic movement. 
It is the closest approach to the drama preserved 
to us in Hebrew literature, whose genius never 
favored this highly organic form. There is needed 
but the usual indication of the dramatis personce 
to clear the movement of the plot, and to reveal 
the force- and beauty of the poem. 

A maiden, her royal admirer, ladies of the 
court, the girl's brother and her shepherd lover, 
appear and disappear in animated conversation. 
The country maiden is wooed away from her shep- 
herd lad by the allurements of a royal admirer, 
who employs all the resources of fervid flattery 
and passionate persuasion to win her as a new at- 
traction for his harem. He is foiled, however, by 
her simple, steadfast loyalty to her absent lover, 
to whom she at length returns, triumphant in her 
virtue. In a corrected version, the sensuousness of 
our English translation disappears in the ordinary 
richness of Eastern imagery, and the poem be- 
comes a pure picture of loyal love. It reveals 
thus the healthy moral tone of Jewish society in 
that early age. This sound domestic virtue of the 
people, which looked with abhorrence on the li- 
centiousness of the court, becomes all the more 

•• Ewald says the tenth century, and Kuenen the eighth cent- 
ury* 



THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 141 

striking in contrast with the polygamous customs 
of the surrounding nations. "We see the social 
foundation on which Israel builded such a noble 
structure of ethical religion. The people whose 
literature opens with such a laud of loyal love 
might well rise into the pure splendors of a 
Second Isaiah. 

Such a poem fitly introduces the canon of 
Scripture ; since, into whatever heights Religion 
aspires to lift the fabric of civilization, she must 
lay its corner-stone in the marriage bond, and rear 
the church and the state upon the family. 

Perhaps we may also find in this Hebrew Song 
of Songs that mystic meaning, not uncommon in 
Eastern love-songs, at least in later readings of 
them, which Edwin Arnold has so vividly brought 
out in the Hindoo Song of Songs ; and may un- 
derstand how the Church came to take it as a 
parable of the love of the soul for its Heavenly 
Ideal, seen in the Christ. 

Job, thus read, becomes a semi-dramatic poem, 
in which the problem of the disconnection of good- 
ness and good-fortune, the lack of any just ordering 
of individual life, is discussed in the persons of an 
upright and sorely afflicted patriarch and his three 
friends, who come to condole and counsel with 
him. Through their interchanging colloquies, 
that bring up one after another the stock theo- 
ries of the age of the author, the argument moves 
along without really getting on. No solution is 



142 THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

found for the perplexing puzzle, in which man's 
moral instincts beat vainly against the hard facts 
of life. Once, for a moment, the thought of a fu- 
ture life flashes up, as the true solution of the 
injustice of earth, in that thrilling cry of the tor- 
tured soul : 

I know that my Redeemer liveth, 

And that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: 

And though, after my skin, worms destroy this body, 

Yet out of my flesh shall I see God ; 

Whom I shall see for myself, 

Ahd mine eyes shall behold, and not as a stranger. 

But the vision fades upon an atmosphere un- 
ready for it, and the poet does not return to follow 
this clue out into the sunshine. 

All the light that he can discern is in Nature's 
manifestations of power and order and wisdom. 
From a wide range of knowledge, the poet draws 
together upon the stage the wonders of creation, 
which, with daring freedom, he introduces God 
himself as describing ; until at length Job humbles 
himself in an awe not uncheered by trust : 

Therefore haye I uttered that I understood not. 
Things too wonderful for me which 1 knew not. 

I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear ; 
But now mine eye seeth Thee. 
Wherefore I abhor myself, 
And repent in dust and ashes. 

By dropping out the episode of Elihu, as an in- 
sertion of SQme later hand, the movement of the 



THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 143 

poem becomes sustained and progressive. The 
arguments of the Jewish theology are cleverly pre- 
sented, while the swift, sure sense of justice in 
the sufferer pierces all sophisms, and riddles all 
pious conventionalities. The descriptions of 
Nature are graphic and eloquent. The motif of 
the drama is one that voices the thought and 
feeling of our far-off age, in which many men 
again vainly thresh the old arguments of conven- 
tional theology, in trying to solve the "godless 
look of earth," and take refuge anew in the man- 
ifestations of power and law in nature ; not with- 
out the ancient lesson, let us trust, of an awe 
which silences and purifies, and leaves them 
in the light as of a mystery of meaning on the 
sphynx's face, breaking into the dawning of a day 
which " uttereth speech." Scientific agnosticism, 
in so far as it is an humble confession of human 
ignorance, has its worship scored in this noble 
poem, ringing the changes on the strain, at once 
plaint and praise : 

Canst thou by searching find out Cod ? 
Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ? 
It is as high as heaven ; what canst thou do? 
Deeper than hell; what canst thou know? 

Curiously enough, as showing the power of con- 
ventionalism, the author winds up with a prose 
epilogue of the genuine story-book fashion, in 
which all things are set right by Job's restoration 
to his lost wealth, in multiplied possessions. Pa- 



144 THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

thetic persuasion of the poor human heart that 
all things must come right in the end ! 

What the Epistle to the Eomans, that affright- 
ing vade mecum of theological disputants, becomes 
when read thus reasonably as a whole, with criti- 
cal discernment of its real aim, I will not try to 
tell you ; but will content myself with sending 
you where you may see it beautifully told, with 
Paul's own upspringing inspiration of righteous- 
ness, in Matthew Arnold's " St. Paul and Protest- 
antism." 

HI. 

Each great booh should, as a ivhole, be read in its 
proper place in Hebreio and Christian history. 

The historical method is the true clue to the in- 
terpretation of a book. To know it aright we 
must know the age in which it was produced. 
This is the method by which such surprising light 
has been shed on many great works. "Who that 
has read Taine's graphic portraiture of the Eliza- 
bethan age can fail ever thereafter to see Shake- 
speare stand forth vividly ? "What can we make of 
Dante wdthout some knowledge of Italy in the 
thirteenth century? What new life is given to 
Milton's Samson after we have seen the blind old 
poet of the fallen Protectorate in his dreary home ! 
How can we rightly estimate Bousseau's writings 
unless we know somewhat of the artificial and 



THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 145 

luxurious age to which they came as a call back 
to nature ? Taken out of their true surroundings 
these writings lose their force and meaning. 

In the same way we need to find the historical 
place of a Biblical writing, and to read it in the 
light of its relation to the period. 

The traditional view of Deuteronomy made it 
the last of the writings of Moses, a Farewell Ad- 
dress of the Father of his Country ; reciting to the 
nation he had founded the story of its deliverance, 
repeating the laws established for its welfare, and 
warning it against the dangers awaiting it in the 
future. Such a view was attended with many diffi- 
culties, not insuperable, however, to the critical 
knowledge of earlier generations. Its real place 
in the history of Israel appears to have been 
found of late. 

The Prophetic Reformation of Religion, begun 
in the eighth century before Christ, by the group 
of noble men of whom Isaiah was the most con- 
spicuous, had, by the latter part of the seventh 
century before Christ, become ripe for an organi- 
zation of the institutions of religion. Jeremiah 
was the central figure in this second period of the 
prophetic movement. Upon the throne of Judah 
at that time was the good young king, Josiah — 
the Edward the Sixth of Israel — in whom the 
hopes of the reformers centred. About the year 
625 B.C. occurred an event that decided the fu- 
ture of religion in Judah ; described in the twenty- 
7 



146 THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 

second chapter of the second book of Kings. The 
high-priest sent to the young king, saying : 

I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. 

This book of the law of Moses, according to 
tradition, had been lost ; had been lost so long 
that its provisions had dropped into disuse, into 
oblivion ; an oblivion so complete that the nation's 
religion ignored and violated the whole system of 
that law ; had been lost so long and so thoroughly 
that the very existence of such a law had passed 
from the memory of man. 

This was the book that Hilkiah claimed to 
have re-discovered in the temple archives. It was 
at once read to the excited king. It made a pro- 
found impression upon him by its revelation of 
the apostasy in which the nation was living, and 
by its solemn threatenings upon such apostasy. . 

It came to pass that when the king had heard the words of 
the book of the law, that he rent his clothes. 

For, said he : 

Great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, 
because our fathers have not hearkened unto the words of this 
book, to do according unto all that which is written concern- 
ing us. 

The devout young king threw himself into a 
thorough reformation of the prevailing religion. 
All local altars were swept away, all idolatries 
were cleared from the Jerusalem temple, the 
priesthood was centred in the capital and more 



THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 147 

thoroughly organized ; in short, as our fathers 
read the story, Mosaism was re-established, after 
some seven centuries of partial or total disuse. 

Through processes which we cannot now follow, 
our later critics have, I think, fairly established the 
proposition, that this book of The Law was none 
other than the substance of our book of Deuter- 
onomy, then for the first time written. The plans 
of the prophetic reformers had contemplated 
the sweeping changes described above, in the 
interests of an ethical and spiritual religion. 
They felt that they were but carrying out the 
principles of the nation's great Founder. Of 
his original conception of religion, bodied in 
The Ten Words, their aspirations were the 
legitimate historical development ; as the leaf and 
bud are the growth of the far back roots. This 
programme of the prophetic reformers, presented 
in its true light as a development of the ideas of 
Moses, was, by the priest Hilkiah, sent to the king 
as the law of the nation's Founder, with the results 
sketched above. 

Read in this light, the book takes on a fresh 
and fascinating interest. It marks the organiza- 
tion of the movement toward a higher religion 
which had been started by the great prophets of 
the preceding century. It becomes the Augsburg 
Confession of the Jewish Reformation, from which 
dates the gradual possession of the institutions of 
the nation by ethical and spiritual religion. 



148 THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

The lofty character of this book, the " St, John 
of the Old Testament/' as Ewald called it, is thus 
rendered intelligible ; as it stands for the aspi- 
rations of the noblest movement in ancient Jewish 
history. It is the issue of a long travail of soul 
to whose words we hearken in such a truth as 
this : 

Hear, Israel : The Lord our God is one Lord : and thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy 
soul, and with all thy might. 

Placed in this position, the book of Deuteron- 
omy becomes the key to Israel's history, by which 
criticism is reconstructing that story, on the lines 
of the great laws of all life, with most significant 
consequences to the cause of religion. The ideas 
and institutions known to us as The Mosaic Law 
come forth now as the crown and culmination of a 
long historic development. Israel's story is that 
of a slow and gradual education under the divine 
hand ; not a relapse, but a progress, not an apos- 
tasy, but an evolution. Israel takes its place in 
the general order of humanity's movement. "With 
it religion sweeps at once into the pathway of 
progress which science has shown to be the order 
of nature ; and the historic revelation is seen to be, 
like the revelation in nature, a gradual, progres- 
sive manifestation of Him " whose goings forth are 
as the morning " — its orbit the sweep of the ascend- 
ing sun. 

With such mighty secrets does this little book 



THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 149 

grow luminous when placed in the light of its real 
belongings. 

The Book of Ezekiel, whose historic position 
was never disputed, becomes of new value in 
the light of a fuller knowledge of its period. It 
presents to the science of Biblical criticism the 
missing link in its theory of Israel's development. 
It shows the process of transformation, out of 
which issued during the exile the elaborate, 
hierarchical system known to us as Mosaism. 
The new criticism seems to me to have reasonably 
'established the theorem, that the priestly cultus 
embodied in the legislation of the Pentateuch was 
first systematized into the form it there presents 
during the exile, and was first set up as the 
national system on the return to Judea. It is not 
claimed that it was a new manufacture of that 
period. As such it would be inconceivable.* It 
is simply claimed that it was a thorough codifica- 
tion, for the first time, of the scattered and con- 
flicting codes of conduct and systems of worship 
of the various local priesthoods of Israel, as 
handed down by tradition and in records from 
ancient times ; a codification animated by the 
centralizing and hierarchical tendencies working 
in the nation; which tendencies were themselves 
the result largely of the prophetic spirit, and 

* Ask at Abel and at Dan whether the genuine old statutes of 
Israel have lost their force?— 2 Samuel, xx. 18. Restored by 
Ewald from the LXX. 



150 THE EIGHT CKITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

its aspirations for a nobler religion.* It is not 
difficult to account for this remarkable priestly 
movement. 

The institutional organization of religion that 
began under Josiah had continued, with various 
fortunes, the aim of the higher spirits of the na- 
tion, down to the exile. The movement of life was 
in the direction of uniformity and order. There 
was much in the circumstances of the exile to 
stimulate this movement. The priests were left 
without their temple worship, and, in the absence 
of outward interests, must have turned their 
thought in upon their system itself, studying it 
as they had not done in the midst of its actual 
operation. Like all wrongly lost possessions, it be- 
came doubly dear. The Jews were placed in the 
midst of an ancient and highly organized priestly 
system in Babylonia, whose benefits to culture and 
religion they must have noted and pondered. In 
the national humiliation and the personal sorrows 
of such a wholesale carrying away of a people 
from their native land, a wide-spread . awakening 
of the inner life was experienced, a genuine revi- 
val of religion. A new wave of prophetic enthu- 
siasm rose in the strange land, lifting the soul of 
the nation to heights of spiritual and ethical re- 
ligion never reached before. 

This revival was stamped with the impress of 

* Such a late codification is no more inconceivable than Justin- 
ian's codification of Roman law. 



THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 151 

the intellectual influences which were working 
upon the Jews in Babylonia. Some of the ex- 
tant writings of this period, alike in literary style, 
in moral tone and in religious thought, mark a 
new era. Israel's genius flowered in this dark 
night — true to the mystic character of the race. 
This highest effort of prophetic thought and feel- 
ing appears to have quickly exhausted itself. 
In reality, it followed the usual order of religious 
movements, and turned into a priestly organiza- 
tion. The group of prophets around the first 
Isaiah prepared the way for the priestly move- 
ment that followed a century later. The group 
of prophets around the second Isaiah prepared the 
way for the priestly movement that followed close 
in their steps. First comes always, in religion, an 
epoch of inspiration, and then comes a period of 
organization. The organization never bodies fully 
the spirit of the inspiration. The ideal is not real- 
izable in institutions. Institutional religion is al- 
ways a compromise, a mediation between the 
lofty conceptions and impatient aspirations of the 
few who inspire the new life, and the low notions 
and contented conventionalisms of the many whom 
they seek to inspire. The compromise is neces- 
sarily of the nature of a reaction ; but the inter- 
play of action and re-action is the law of ethical 
as of chemical forces. 

Israel really needed the conserving work of a 
great organization. The prophetic religion was 



152 THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

far in advance of the popular level. The high 
thoughts and lofty ideas of the prophets needed 
to be wrought into a cultus, which, while not 
breaking abruptly with the popular religion, 
should imbue the conventional forms with deeper 
ethical and spiritual meanings; should, through 
them, systematically train the people in ethical 
habits and spiritual conceptions ; and should thus 
gradually educate men out of these forms them- 
selves. 

In the providence of God, and under the in- 
fluences of His patient Spirit, this needful system 
was developed in the exile : a system whose sym- 
bolism was so charged with ethical and spiritual 
senses that it led on to Christ ; as the Epistle to 
the Hebrews rightly shows and as Paul distinctly 
declares. As the first priestly period, following the 
first prophetic epoch, bodied that double movement 
in a book — Deuteronomy ; so the second priestly 
period, following the second prophetic epoch, bod- 
ied this double movement in a book, or group of 
books — the present form of the Pentateuch. The 
traditions and histories and legislations of the 
past were worked over into a connected series of 
writings, through which was woven the new priestly 
system, in a historical form. On the restoration 
to Judea, this institutional reorganization was set 
up as the law of the land, and continued thence- 
forward in force — the providential instrumentality 
for the ad interim work of four centuries. Such 



THE EIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 153 

a remarkable process of development, so deepening 
in us a sense of the guiding hand of God, ought 
to show some sign of its working, in the literature 
of the period. However clear, from our general 
knowledge, the tendencies which were at work in 
that period, we could not feel assured of our 
correct interpretation of this most important 
epoch, in the absence of some such sign, in a writ- 
ing of that date. 

The Book of Ezekiel supplies the missing link. 
The writer was a prophet-priest, who went into 
the exile, and wrote in Babylonia. In the earlier 
part of his life-work, recorded in the earlier por- 
tion of his book, he was thoroughly prophetic, 
intensely ethical and spiritual, breathing the very 
spirit of his great master, Jeremiah. In the latter 
part of his career he was visited with dreams, 
such as are plainly indicated to us in the re- 
markable vision occupying the concluding section 
of his book. The fortieth chapter opens thus : 

In the visions of God brought he me into the ]and of Israel, 
and set me upon a very high mountain, upon which was as the 
frame of a city on the south. 

Then follows, through eighteen chapters, a 
sketch of the temple system in the expected res- 
toration. It is a thoroughly ideal sketch, a vision 
destined to take on much simpler and humbler 
proportions in its realization ; a picture probably 
not intended for copying in actual construction, 



154 THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

but, like all ideal work, a powerful stimulus to 
tlie aspirations it expressed. . 

It is a free sketch of the New Priestly System, 
on the easel, awaiting correction and completion 
at the hands of Ezra and others. It reveals to us 
the visions that were occupying the minds of the 
best men in the latter part of the exile, and the 
work they were essaying. Thus we are prepared 
for the final issue. 

The Book of Daniel has been wrongly placed, 
traditionally, with most serious consequences to 
the character of the book, and, through this mis- 
conception, to Christianity. Dated from the early 
part of the sixth century before Christ, its story 
of Daniel's experiences read as literal history, and 
its visions appear as actual predictions of long 
subsequent events. 

A high authority has declared — 

There can be no doubt that it exercised a greater influence 
upon the early Christian Church than any other writing of the 
Old Testament.* 

That influence, owing to this misconception, 
is chiefly to be traced in the growth of an apoca- 
lyptic literature, and in the fantastical and mate- 
rial expectations of the Messianic Kingdom which 
they encouraged. It has continued down to our 
own day turning heads as wise as Sir Isaac New- 

* Brook Foss Westcott. Smith's Bible Dictionary : article on 
Daniel. 



THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBI/E. 155 

ton's, setting religion at conjuring with visions of 
monstrous beasts and juggling with mystic fig- 
ures, until the name of Prophecy has become a 
by-word. 

This book appears to take its proper place, at 
least in its present form, about a century and a 
half before Christ. That was a period of deep 
depression for Israel. Under Antiochus Epiphanes 
the nation had been sorely oppressed, its temple 
defiled, and its religion well nigh crushed out. 
Men's hearts were failing them for fear, and for 
looking for those things that were coming to pass 
upon the earth. Pious souls turned back to the 
ancient time of bitter humiliation, when Israel 
had been scattered in a strange land, and recalled 
the bold word of faith spoken by Jeremiah, which 
had stayed the spirits of their forefathers. The 
great prophet promised that after seventy years 
the nation should be restored to its native land, 
and should renew its prosperity gloriously. It 
had won back its home, but in the old home- 
stead it had grown poorer and feebler, genera- 
tion after generation. Had the ancient prom- 
ise of prophecy failed? Good men could not 
think so. To some devout soul came the sug- 
gestion that the seventy years had meant seventy 
Sabbatical years, each of which consisted of seven 
years ; that is, four hundred and ninety years. 
One can still feel the thrill that must have gone 
through him, as he saw that this computation 



156 THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

would place the defiling of the temple — that sign 
of God's having forsaken his people — in the middle 
of the last week of years. It was then only about 
three years to the destined end of the weary 
period that Jeremiah had included in the term of 
Israel's humbling, after which would come Jeho- 
vah's help. Fired with this thought, he set him- 
self to inspire his people with fresh hope and 
courage. 

Around a traditional Daniel, famed for his wis- 
dom and piety, and possibly upon an earlier doc- 
ument containing some tales of this sage and 
saint, he wove a story which should interpret 
Jeremiah's prophecy and Jehovah's purpose. With 
charming grace he tells the tale of Daniel's con- 
stancy and trust under the sorest trials, and of 
the divine deliverance that always came to him. 
Into his mouth he placed predictions of what had 
already come to pass in history, that thus his rep- 
utation as a prophet might be established. Then 
he caused him to present a striking series of sym- 
bolical visions, the clue to which was furnished for 
the writer's contemporaries by certain clear allu- 
sions. These visions foretold deliverance as about 
to come at the approaching end of the four hun- 
dred and ninety years of Jeremiah. Other visions 
sketched the ushering in of the Messiah-Kingdom, 
in glowing pictures of lofty religious tone. 

In that dark night over Israel this book was as 
the morning star. It was truly, as Dean Stanley 



THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 157 

called it, "the Gospel of the age." Its story 
spread, and with it spread renewed patience and 
hope. It doubtless fed the forces of that glo- 
rious revolt that shortly thereafter burst forth 
under the heroic Maccabees. Thus it kept 
alive the vital spark in the nation, through a 
crucial hour, that else might have gone out be- 
fore it had given birth to Christianity. Noble- 
as the book of Daniel is in many ways, especi- 
ally as the real father of "the philosophy of 
history," it has a still deeper interest to us Chris- 
tians for its timely service to the sinking nation 
through which came at last our Blessed Master. 

The Acts of the Apostles, when studied in the 
light of the tendencies known to have been work- 
ing in the apostolic church, becomes of similar 
importance in New Testament history to Deuter- 
onomy in Old Testament history. 

The primitive Church was, as we well know, 
agitated by contending factions. Two leading 
parties dominated all minor schools of thought ; 
the Jewish Christians, who naturally wanted to 
keep within the old religion, and who would have 
made a reformed Judaism, and the Gentile Chris- 
tians, who as naturally objected to being herded 
within Judaism, and who wanted to make a new 
and universal society. The first party rallied 
under the name of Peter, and the second used the 
name of Paul. There was imminent danger that 
the new society would break apart, with fatal con- 



158 THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

sequences to posterity. Real and deep as were the 
differences between Peter and Paul, they did not, 
in all probability, sunder these great natures as 
widely as their followers imagined. There must 
have been meeting points between such souls, in 
love with the one Master. To find these conver- 
gences, and construct out of them a peace-plat- 
form on which both wings of the new society might 
stand, was the aim of The Acts. It embodied 
genuine journals of a traveling companion of St. 
Paul, notes of his addresses in various cities, tra- 
ditions, lost to us outside of this book, of Peter's 
conciliatory attitude and utterances ; and groups 
these historic fragments into a sketch, in which 
the two apostles are shown as dividing equally the 
labors of founding the Christian Church, as preach- 
ing the same views, and acting in cordial harmony. 
This book is a sign of the disposition to draw 
together which was gaining ground among the 
primitive churches, a disposition fostered largely 
by this writing; out of which process of com- 
prehension and conciliation arose the Catholic 
Church, naming its great cathedrals after St. Pe- 
ter and St. Paul. 

IV. 

The books which are of a composite character 
should be read in their several parts, and traced to their 
proper places in history. 

Thus, for example, in reading Isaiah uncriti- 



THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 159 

cally we pass from the fragment of history that 
forms our thirty-ninth chapter, to the magnificent 
strain of impassioned imagination which opens 
with the fortieth chapter, as though there were no 
hiatus ; and we proceed straight through this lat- 
ter section of the book, taking it all as written in 
the reign of Hezekiah, that is, in the latter part of 
the eighth century before Christ. "We thus view 
this secoiicl section of Isaiah from a wrong stand- 
point. The panorama of its visions becomes 
blurred. "We cannot focus the glass upon the ob- 
jects in its field. The real significance and beauty 
of this noblest reach of prophetic imagination 
evanishes from our vision. 

To see this second section of Isaiah aright, we 
must push it down the stream of time nearly two 
hundred years. It is the work of a prophet, or 
group of prophets, in the latter part of the exile, 
about the middle of the sixth century before 
Christ. Watching the signs of the times, the 
gifted and gracious spirit who led this chorus of 
hope saw tokens, as of the dawning of day after 
the long, dark night. Eumors of the all conquer- 
ing Cyrus, the Medo-Persian king, made Babylon 
tremble with fear, and Israel thrill with excited 
expectation. In the ethical and spiritual religion 
of the advancing Persians, the Jews might look 
for a bond of sympathy. It would be the policy of 
Cyrus to make friends of the foes of Babylon, and 
to place the captive people in their own land on 



160 THE EIGHT CEITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

the borders of his empire, as his grateful feudato- 
ries. The seer saw thus, in the conquering hero, 
the Servant of God, raised up to restore the 
chosen people to their native country. Prophecy 
kindled anew for its final flame, and burst forth in 
the immortal strain of hope for the long-tried 
Israel : 

Comtort ye, comfort ye my people, 

Saith your God. 

Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, 

That her warfare is accomplished, 

That her iniquity is pardoned. 

I never read this sublime chapter without a 
fresh thrill, as I hear the voice of a crushed race, 
lifting amid its misery a cry of unconquerable 
confidence in the Just and Holy One, who was 
ordering alike the embattled armies of earth and 
the starry hosts of the skies, and through history, 
as in nature, was sweeping on resistlessly to ful- 
fill the good pleasure of His Will. No wonder the 
matchless oratorio of the Messiah opens with this 
aria, abruptly as the original words are spoken in 
Isaiah. They sound the key-note of the good 
tidings of great joy which, growing as a hope in 
men's souls through the centuries, became a faith, 
an assured conviction, in the life of the Christus 
Consolator ; in whom God is seen as " Our Father 
which art in heaven." 

Every gem of this second section of Isaiah 
takes on a new lustre in this setting. It is the 



THE EIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 161 

cry of the lost sheep in the wilderness, catching 
sight of the Shepherd who they thought had for- 
gotten them, that we hear in the gracious strain : 

He shall feed his flock like a Shepherd, 

He shall gather the lambs with his arm, 

And carry them in his bosom, 

And shall gently lead those that are with young. 

The vision of the Suffering, Righteous Servant 
of God grows clear and pathetic in the true 
historic light. The chastened nation feels itself 
called to a higher mission than that of political 
power. It is to teach the other nations of the 
earth the knowledge of God. That knowledge it is 
itself to learn in the school of sorrow. It is to 
save humanity through the sacrifice of itself. 
Thus the secret of suffering is spelled out, not for 
ancient Israel alone, but for all mankind ; the se- 
cret which is shrined, for ever sacred to us, in the 
story of our Lord Christ ; from whom you and I 
this day, through a simple symbol, are to learn 
anew that if we sorrow it is that we may be made 
perfect through suffering, and thus be fitted to 
lead our fellows up into the light and love of God. 

Y. 

These writings should he read critically, until we can 
decipher the successive hands working upon them, and 
interpret them accordingly. 

Few, if any, of the books of the Bible stand now 
as they came from their original authors. Nearly 



162 THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

all have been re-edited ; most of them many times. 
Some of them nave been worked over by so many 
hands, and have undergone such numerous and 
serious * changes, that the original writer would 
scarcely identify his work. The historical writings 
of the Old Testament take up into them all sorts of 
materials, from all sorts of sources. If the annals 
of the Venerable Bede, the father of English his- 
tory, had been re-written again and again through 
the subsequent centuries ; abridged, enlarged, inter- 
preted by each editor ; the accumulating knowledge 
and growing experience of the nation read into his 
simple chronicles ; we should appreciate the criti- 
cal care needful in studying our edition of Bede if 
we would know the real . original. Very much 
such care is necessary if we are to use the Old 
Testament histories aright for information. It is 
as though there were several surfaces to the 
parchment on which the histories were written, on 
each successive film of which, in finest tracery, an 
older record was inscribed. 

Genesis, for example, presents us, at every step 
of what seems a consecutive story, with successive 
layers of tradition, through which we must work 
our way most carefully if we would really under- 
stand the book. We readily observe a twofold 
tradition of the Creation in the opening chapters 
of Genesis, differing very materially : a sign to us, 
if we need it, that there was no one authoritative 
account of the Creation current in Israel. Little 



THE EIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 163 

attention is required to note a double version of 
the story of the flood, whose artless piecing to- 
gether is the cause of the confusions and contra- 
dictions that puzzle many readers., The decipher- 
ing of this double tradition of the flood first 
started criticism upon the true track of Biblical 
study. The frequently recurring phrase, " These 
are the generations," or beginnings, indicates the 
insertion of fragments of a work giving an account 
of the origin of the world, of the races of earth, of 
language, of the Jewish people, etc. ; a work called 
by the critics " The Book of Origins." In the 
fourteenth chapter there is what seems to be a 
very ancient non-Jewish fragment of history, torn 
possibly from some Syrian writing, which gives a 
tale of Abraham's prowess in war. 

And even in one and the same tale of tradition, 
we apparently find strata of thought laid down 
by successive ages. There are extant to-day 
parchments in which, for lack of other material, 
a writer has scratched partially away an earlier 
manuscript, and written over it another book. 
Such a palimpsest is Genesis. "A legend of civ- 
ilization is written over a solar-myth, and a tribal 
legend over the legend of civilization, and a the- 
ocratic legend over the tribal." * 

When such a mastery of the Bible-books is won, 

*"The Bible of To-day," Chadwiek, p. 50. 



164 THE EIGHT CKITICAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 

they are to be used in the customary methods of 
critical study, with reference to their contents and 
the significances thereof, under the same general 
laws of interpretation that hold over other litera- 
ture. 

I think I hear some one saying — Is this the 
right use of the Bible, for which I am asked to 
give up the dear, old, simple way of reading for my 
soul's inspiration ? Not at all, my friend. That 
blessed use of the Bible, learned at your mother's 
knees, is still, and must always remain, the best 
use possible to any one. Of this I shall speak 
hereafter. I am now speaking, not of the right 
devotional use of the Bible, but of the right criti- 
cal use of it. It has been used critically in build- 
ing our theologies, but, to a large extent, amiss. 
Out of this wrong use of it has come the miscon- 
ceptions in theology which to-day perplex our 
minds and bar the progress of religion. If we 
must use the Bible critically, let us by all means 
try to employ a true and thorough criticism. Let 
us not think to close every controversy by the 
phrase — The Bible says so. We shall be more 
modest and less disputatious when we appreciate 
the study necessary before any one can properly 
answer the question — What saith the Scriptures ? 

Again I hear a voice from the pews — Who then 
save a scholar is competent for such a use of the 
Bible ? I answer — No one, except a pupil of 



THE EIGHT CKITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 165 

the scholars. The scholars have placed within 
our reach the results of such a critical study of 
the Bible. Tou can find the rational guidance 
you may desire in the manuals which set forth the 
conclusions of these critical processes ; though 
you must painfully feel, as I do, the lack of the 
religious tone in some of them. A crying need 
of our day is a Hand Book to the Bible in which 
the new critical knowledge shall blend, as it may 
blend, with the old spiritual reverence. 

One should not rise from such a study of the 
Bible as we have made to-day, in its merely liter- 
ary aspects, without a new, strange sense of awe 
before this mystic Book. It is the handiwork of 
no one man, of no group of men, of no period. It 
is an organic product, the growth of a whole peo- 
ple, the coralline structure builded by a nation. 
Hands innumerable have toiled over these pages. 
Yoices indistinguishable now, in blended chorus 
from the dawn of history, have joined in the cry 
of the human after God which whispers upon us 
from this sacred phonograph. 

Successive generations of men, struggling with 
sin, striving for purity, searching after God, have 
exhaled their spirits iiito the essence of religion, 
which is treasured in this costly vase. The moral 
forces of centuries, devoted to righteousness, are 
stored in this exhaustless reservoir of ethical 
energy. At such cost, my brothers, has Humanity 
issued this sacred book. From such patience of 



18G THE RIGHT CRITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

preparation has Providence laid this priceless gift 
before you. In such labor of articulation — spell- 
ing out the syllables of the message from on high, 
through multitudinous lives of men dutifully and 
devoutly walking with their God — does the Spirit 
speak to you, O, soul of man. Say thou — 
Speak Lord ; thy servant heareth ! 



It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing origi- 
nated; the only question is; Is it true in and for itself? 

Hegel: " Philosophy of History," Part III.: Sec. III.: Ch. II. 

With reference to things in the Bible, the question whether 
they are genuine or spurious is odd enough. What is genuine 
but that which is truly excellent, which stands in harmony with 
the purest nature and reason, and which even now ministers to 
our highest development? What is spurious but the absurd and 
the hollow, which brings no fruit— at least, no good fruit. 

Goethe : " Conversations," March 11, 1832. 

No article of faith is injured by allowing that there is no such 
positive proof, when or by whom these and some other books 
of holy Scripture were written, as to exclude all possibility of 
doubt and cavil. 

Watson's " Apology for the Bible," Letter IV. 



VI. 
&f)e ftigf)t §bforkai toeof % Bible. 



The principle of development involves also the existence of a 
latent germ of being — a capacity or potentiality striving to real- 
ize itself .... What Spirit really strives for is the realization 
of its Ideal being 

The profoundest thought is connected with the personality of 
Christ — with the historical and external ; and it is the very grand- 
eur of the Christian religion that, with all this profundity, it is 
easy of comprehension by our consciousness in its outward 
aspect, while, at the same time, it summons us to penetrate 
deeper. 

Hegel : " Philosophy of History," pp. 57, 344. [Bohn.] 

Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences go 
on gaining in depth and breadth, and the human mind expand 
as it may, it will never go beyond the elevation and moral cult- 
ure of Christianity as it glistens and shines forth in the gospel! 
Goethe : " Conversations, " March, 11, 1832. 



VI. 
Ei)t Ifttgfjt f^tstomal Use of tfje BtMe. 

"When the fulness of the time was come God sent forth His 

Son." — GrALATIANS, iv. 4. 

^T. PAUL condensed tlie philosophy of Hebrew 
history into a metaphor. Israel travailed 
in birth with Christianity. In the mind 
of the nation was begotten, of the Most High, a 
conception of ethical religion, whose gestation was 
a process of centuries. The period of parturition 
came, and a universal religion was born into the 
world ; bodied, as religion needs must be, in a man, 
Jesus, the Christ. 

"When the fulness of the time was come God sent forth His 
Son." 

The sacred literature of Israel is the record and 
embodiment of this organic growth of her religion, 
through its various moods and tenses, toward its 
ideal in the Christ. The sacred literature of the 
Christian Church is the picture of this flower of 
the sou] of Israel, and of the new growth spring- 
ing up from its seeding down of humanity. The 

whole Bible presents us with the growth of the 
8 169 



170 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

religion of the Christ, below ground and above 
ground ; its rootings and its flowerings. The right 
historical use of the Bible is, through a critical 
knowledge of the sacred literature of Israel, to re- 
produce before our minds this process of the 
growth of the Christ in Israel and of His new 
growth in humanity ; with a view to our intelligent 
perception of His true place in history, and of the 
significance thereof. The heart of the Bible is 
Christ. That which our fathers saw we need to 
see, that in Him all things stand together, as the 
arch is holden by the key-stone. Sightly to read 
the secret of His life is to find the secret of earth's 
problems. Therefore our fathers insisted so strenu- 
ously on the Old Testament preparation for Christ. 
A tree's rootings are proportionate to its size. In 
the gradual prefiguring of Christ through Israel's 
story, they read the historic attestation of His 
revelation. The picture of Israel's history that 
yielded them their vision is dissolving before our 
eyes, at the touch of the new criticism, and men 
are fearing that the secret of the Bible is escaping 
from our age. I desire to-day to draw for you, in 
outline, the story of Israel's development, as traced 
by our new masters ; that you may see the old 
vision re-emergent in truer, nobler forms. The 
re-construction of Hebrew history makes real and 
certain an organic, natural development of the re- 
ligion of the Christ ; a travail of the nation with 
the Son it bore to God. 



THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 171 

The best method of studying any history is in 
its great epochs and periods. The eras of Hebrew 
history group themselves clearly, in orderly pro- 
gression. 

I. 

The Epoch of Moses : B. c. 1300 (?) 

Hebrew history properly begins with this era. 
The tribes of Israel when first resolved by the 
glass of history, appear upon the Arabian border 
of Egypt, as occupants of the rich pasture lands 
of Goshen. They were a branch of a large Semitic 
family, which included Moab, Edom, Ammon and 
other familiar tribes. Of the social, intellectual 
and religious status of the Hebrews at this period 
we have little definite information. They would 
seem to have been on the usual plane of races 
which have entered the semi-nomadic stage, and 
which are gradually substituting agricultural pur- 
suits for a roving shepherd life. Oppressed by 
Egypt they revolt, and begin a migration backward 
toward the north and east. 

The soul of this movement was Moses ; a real 
historic figure, worthy, as we can see through the 
mists around him, of the imposing form which 
Michael Angelo has given him. A great man is 
nearly always to be found at the core of a great 
social growth, charging the latent tendencies of a 
race with energy, and shaping their action upon 
the form of his mind. "An institution is the 



172 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 

lengthened shadow of a man," writes Emerson. 
Judaism is the lengthened shadow of Moses. What- 
ever else Moses may have done, he proved himself 
the architect of Israel, by laying the foundation 
that determined the form and size of the later 
structure. He taught his simple people to recog- 
nize Jehovah as their tribal God. What this name 
meant in the conception of the people before his 
time is by no means clear to us now. It appears 
to have stood for the personification of some one 
of the forms of nature's forces, that arrest upon 
themselves the nomad's vague sense of the In- 
finite and Divine in the world about him. Around 
the Power felt in Saturn or the Sun, Moses 
threw the spell of 'an awe which is deeper far 
than that awakened by the starry heavens above 
man — the awe aroused by the moral law wiihin 
man. He gave his rude children a noble moral 
code, the original form of the Decalogue. These 
Ten Words were issued as the law of Jehovah. 
Jehovah then was the source and authority of the 
laws which the conscience owned. The moral 
law was his body of statutes. To keep this law was 
the way to please Him. His commands reached 
through rites and ordinances to conduct and char- 
acter. His demands were not -for sacrifices, but for 
good lives. His worship was aspiration and en- 
deavor after goodness. 

And this Power enjoining morality was none 
other than the Power which in nature seemed so 



THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 1?3 

often unmoral and even immoral. Jehovah of the 
skies was the God of the Ten Words. 

This was a seminal thought, bodied in an insti- 
tution. In begetting this conception in the soul 
of Israel, Moses fathered the life which grew 
through embryonic forms, during the slow gesta- 
tion of the centuries, shaping toward the ideal 
of religion. Whatever was vital and progressive 
in the nations thought and feeling sucked up its 
juices from the seed deep-rooted in this basic in- 
stitution. Rightly did legislators and historians, 
through the after ages, look back and ascribe all 
their work in the development of the national life 
to Moses. Even thus the rose, were it conscious, 
might turn its crimson face upon the ground and 
whisper to the seed at its roots — I am thy work. 
Even thus the son, in the pride and power of man- 
hood, goes back to the old homestead, and looking 
into his father's face confesses — All that I am 
you have made me. 

II. 

The heroic age: B. c. 1300-1100. 

After Moses there follows a period of at least 
two hundred years, of which we have very imper- 
fect accounts, and those plainly traditional and 
commingled with legend. The Hebrew tribes ap- 
pear to have gradually gravitated upon Canaan ; 
slowly settling into agricultural pursuits, and 
winning from its previous occupants the land they 



174 THE EIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

coveted, inch by inch, in bloody strife. They 
camped upon their hard-won fields for several 
generations, maintaining their claims at the point 
of the sword, with varying success ; now mastering 
their foes, and again almost crushed by them. 
The inter-relations of the several tribes during 
this period would seem to have been of a very loose 
character. Each appears to have acted for itself, 
except at critical moments, when common danger 
drew them together in concerted action under 
leaders of commanding ability. Tradition has 
preserved charming tales of some of these re- 
doubtable champions of the Hebrews, of whom we 
would gladly know much more. This was the 
heroic age of Israel. Rude, rough times of con- 
stant alarm brought forth little that was memora- 
ble save feats of courage. We have few glimpses 
into the state of religion in this simple society, and 
upon what is brought out into light the hues of 
later ages are reflected. Quite clearly we may 
discern that the religion of the people in those 
days was by no means that which we know as 
Mosaism. How could such a sublime conception 
as that of Moses have ripened in a people at this 
stage of their development ? Like all founders of 
religion, he was far in advance of his age. If a 
few higher natures, here and there, recognized 
and appreciated the significance of the Ten "Words 
of Jehovah, the mass of the people could not have 
done so. And movement is determined toward 



THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 175 

the mass in ethics as in physics. All that Moses 
could have hoped to do was to body his seminal 
truth in an institution, that should keep it alive in 
the nation until the proper conditions were found 
for its quickening and growth. This he achieved 
in binding the tribes to the worship of Jehovah, 
whose law was owned in the moral standards of 
the people. To this loyalty to Jehovah, as the God 
of Israel, Moses did securely bind the tribes. 
They never wholly forswore Jehovah, and thus 
never lost the germ begotten in the soul of the 
race, w T hich held the promise and potency of the 
future. 

But around Jehovah, as the supreme God of the 
race, the people still continued to group their an- 
cient divinities, and to worship them in the old- 
time manner. The religion of a people in any stage 
of its history is always a composite ; a succession 
of layers that correspond to the intellectual and 
moral classifications of society. But the pro- 
portion of the true religion rises with a progress- 
ive civilization. In these semi-civilized tribes the 
religion of the bulk of the people, in all probability, 
corresponded with the ideas and forms of worship 
of other peoples in the same stage of develop- 
ment. In the lowest stratum fetichism lingered 
on, the worship of any unusual thing that excited 
the wonder of a simple people. Great trees of 
immemorial age, huge boulders standing strangely 
in fertile valleys, continued the objects of super- 



178 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

stitious awe. Jehovahism took up these remnants 
of fetichism into its higher life, when it found that 
they could not be dispossessed, just as Christianity 
did long afterward with pagan customs, and gave 
them a higher significance in connection with the 
worship of Jehovah.* 

Higher strata of the people worshipped the va- 
rious powers of nature, the sun, the moon, the 
stars, after much the same fashion in vogue among 
their kindred Semites. t Even the revolting rites 
of the surrounding nature-worships were not lack- 
ing in Israel. V/hile the gentle and gracious warmth 
of the spring sun called forth the happy adoration 
of the people, the scorching and consuming heat of 
the midsummer sun roused the fears of the suf- 
ferers for their crops, their cattle, and their very 
lives. They sought to propitiate this fierce Power, 
which was evidently hostile to man, with offerings 
of the life it devoured so pitilessly. The choicest 
lives — the first-born son, the fairest maiden of the 
village — were sacrificed to glut its greed of death. 
Into the fiery arms of Moloch parents laid the 
children of their love. Human sacrifices were 
unquestionably a recognized form of worship 
during this period, at least in times of deep 

* Of this process we see hints in the various references to the 
consecration of great trees and stones to Jehovah. 

f The indications of this nature-worship lie scattered on the 
surface of the Old Testament so plainly that no one can fail to 
notice them. 



THE EIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. J 77 

distress.* The libertine longings of nature, the 
free fecundities of mother-earth, imaged to the 
grosser people the Power working round about 
them and within their very bodies ; and men and 
women gave free rein to their appetites and 
passions, in honor of divinities like Ashera, the 
Syrian Venus, t The various tribes probably had 
different rites. 

The general picture we must fashion in our 
minds of this period is of a polytheistic, idolatrous 
people, slightly distinguishable from the sur- 
rounding Semites, save as they held, in their rec- 
ognition of Jehovah and his Ten "Words, the germ 
of a higher thought and life. 

* "Among the Edomites, Ishmaelites, Ammonites and Moabites 
— the tribes with which Israel felt itself most nearly related — 
the service of the rigorous and destroying god was most promi- 
nent. The very names for God which are most common among 
them — Baal, El, Molech, Milcom, Chemosh— are enough to show 
this. These names denote the mighty, violent, death-dealing 
God." "The Religion of Israel," Knappert, p. 29. These names 
constantly recur in the early history of Israel . Jephthah's vow 
is a familiar instance of this abhorrent rite. Circumcision is 
supposed to mark a merciful compromise with this blood-gift ; 
in addition to its sanitary character . 

f We know from general history how among other people the 
homage paid to the productive powers of nature led to systema- 
tized prostitution, in the name of the personification of this force 
of nature. Tradition records how early in this period the Midian- 
ites seduced Israel temporarily from Jehovah, by the licentious 
pleasures of their worship of Baal-Peor. Later on in history we 
find that it is these impure rites that especially provoke the 
anger of the prophets. 



178 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

III. 

The period of the monarchy, down to the epoch of 
ilie great prophets : B. c. 1100-800. 

The story of the making of England may inter- 
pret to us the development that ensued in this 
third period of Israel's history. We know how 
the petty realms of the Angles-land, under press- 
ure from a common foe, learned to act momenta- 
rily together, came for a summer under some 
commanding leader, drew thus into closer affilia- 
tions, grouped gradually around the more pow- 
erful realms, and at length crystallized into England. 
In some such way the Hebrev/ tribes were slowly 
knit together by the necessity of war, until to or- 
ganize a lasting victory they were forced into con- 
solidation, and out of the loose confederation of 
tribes arose a nation, Israel. Social tendencies 
generally throw a leader to the front. The man is 
not wanting for the hour. The king-maker of 
Israel was Samuel. A man combining in that sim- 
ple state of society several functions — priest and 
judge and leader — he had the prescience to divine 
the need of the age, and the wisdom to point out 
the man to meet it. Saul was chosen King, in 
free gathering of the hardy yeomanry, and proved 
his human election a divine selection by rousing 
the nation to new efforts, which his genius led to 
victory. Saul was followed by a brief period of 
national unity under David and Solomon, in which 



THE EIGHT HISTOKICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 179 

the rapid and brilliant progress made in the spread 
of the kingdom, in wealth and civilization, reveal- 
ed the latent powers of this gifted race. 

The progress of political and commercial great- 
ness was stayed by the rending of the kingdom 
after Solomon. No great advances were possible 
amid the chronic jealousies and frequent strife of 
the sister kingdoms, which were unable to come 
together again in a unity that would have restored 
their prestige, and were unable, apart, to achieve 
any signal success in diplomacy or war. 

The social state of the people underwent the 
changes usual in this stage of a people's history. 
With peace came wealth, with wealth came luxury, 
with luxury new social vices, fed from the court 
which grew around the monarchy. But that the 
heart of the people continued sound amid these 
organic changes we may see from several hints 
preserved by tradition. 

The institution, or revival, of the Order of the 
Nazarites was a religio-moral movement. It 
was a protest against the vice of drunkenness that 
was increasing in the land, as, relieved from war's 
alarms and waxing fat upon their fertile fields, 
he people gave themselves to pleasure. The 
first Prohibition Society, of which we have record, 
was this Order of the Nazarites. This Order 
appears also to have had a still deeper moral 
aim, little noticed of old. It was a reaction from 
the social changes that were going on in Israel, a 



180 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OJ? THE BIBLE. 

protest against tlie new-fashioned ways of wealth, 
an earnest effort to hold to the simplicities of 
earlier days, to the good old plain living and high 
thinking. It was a counter-movement of Old 
Israel, essaying to stem the mad rush for riches. 
A still more convincing token of the healthy 
moral tone of the nation is to be found in the 
earliest considerable work of literature preserved 
to us, the Song of Songs. It holds up to scorn the 
licentiousness that Solomon had made fashionable, 
and of which, in a just retribution, he had become 
the abhorred type. The great king fails to cor- 
rupt the virtue of a simple country maiden, des- 
pite of all his blandishments. Ewald assigns this 
poem to the northern kingdom, which had separat- 
ed itself from Judah chiefly in reaction from the 
Solomonic innovations. It leads us into the homes 
of the sturdy peasantry of the hill country, where 
burned the fires on the altars of pure wedded 
love. 

From a people thus sound at heart, amid the 
mellowing richness of civilization, we may well 
expect great things in religion. Whatever the 
outward forms of religion, its roots ran deep down 
into the moral la^, and must needs have borne in 
due time a noble fruitage. There w r as in fact a 
striking development of religion in this period. It 
was coincident with the secular development of 
the nation. This indeed is the general rule of 
religious revival. Religion advances with the ad- 



THE EIGHT HISTOKICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 181 

vancing life of man, each new and true step for- 
ward opening a higher possibility of thought and . 
feeling concerning God. As Moses the Emanci- 
pator was the father of true religion in Israel, so 
Samuel the king-maker was its early master. "We 
cannot now trace clearly his work, but we can see 
that he was a fresh ethical and spiritual force, 
shaping religious life anew. 

Prophets there had doubtless been before him, 
in Israel as out of it, but they were unethical and 
unspiritual influences in religion; the frenzied 
dervishes, the oracular seers, the wizards and 
necromancers who long afterward claimed this 
name, and were denounced by the higher prophets. 
Samuel's masterful work was to turn this semi- 
religious force into a higher channel, and to direct 
it toward a moral aim. He was the creator of 
the type which drew after him "the goodly fellow- 
ship of the prophets." The traditions of Israel 
present him in the role of fearless censor and 
truthful mentor to the infant State ; the role which 
the great prophets later on assumed toward the 
maturer nation. He criticized the King, guided 
the people, and held the nation loyal to Jehovah. 
However little perception the mass of the people 
had of the spiritual significance of the State re- 
ligion, however many gross forms of popular 
religion existed around and within the tolerant 
institutions of Jehovahism, it was a vital matter 
to preserve that State religion, and keep it well 



182 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

ahead of the people's growth. Thus we can 
perceive the historic significance of the work of 
the next great prophet after Samuel, Elijah ; 
through the legendary nimbus that gathered 
round his striking personality and dramatic ac- 
tion. In a critical hour, when the Jehovah-worship 
had well nigh disappeared, he stood alone against 
the powers of the realm, and rallied the people 
once more beneath the name of the god of their 
father. He plucked a victory from defeat which 
decided the course of history. What if Jehovah 
was but a name to the mass of the people? What 
if they continued to worship much as before, only 
no longer at the altars of Baal? There are long 
periods in the history of man when the future de- 
pends upon allegiance to an institution little under- 
stood by those who shout most lustily for it. The 
future may lie seeded down in a name which stores 
within it the forces of a new and higher unfold- 
ing, when the times come ripe. Thus it proved 
through the crawling centuries in which Israel 
held hard by a name of God which then meant 
little to it, but which ultimately evolved its ethi- 
cal significance and manifested unto men, The 
Eternal who loveth righteousness. Thus may it 
prove with the child of Judaism. Liberals, who 
are in such haste to drop the name of Christ, 
should pause long enough to ask themselves the 
question whether, since it roots religion in a life 
of such perfect goodness that it became to men 



THE EIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 183 

the manifestation of God, this sacred name may 
not in its turn hold the secret of our progress; 
whether, from the treasured forces of the past 
that it gathers into itself, when the spring time 
now setting in shall have fully come, it may not 
blossom into the religion of the future ? A civili- 
zation should not be cut off from the historic seed 
which lies at the roots of its religion, if it is to 
grow unto the harvest. 

That in this fidelity to the tradition of their race 
the religion of the people of Israel was in the vital 
processes of growth, through this long period, we 
know assuredly from one conclusive fact. Out of 
this tedious winter came, suddenly as it seems 
to us, a rich and beautiful spring. The epoch of 
the great prophets, with a new life of thought and 
aspiration, breaks in abruptly on this commingl- 
ing of all sorts of religion within the precincts 
of Jehovahism. Even in February the sap is 
softening and warming in the veins which show 
no greening on the tips of the patient trees. Israel 
was swelling toward the day that was sure to 
come, when, lo ! the spring ! 

IV. 

The era of the great propliets, before the exile : B.C. 
800-586. 

In the southern Pacific, where coral islands are 
slowly forming beneath the surface of the sea, he 



184 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 

who is curious to study the process of the making 
of an island must send the divers down to bring 
up broken bits of coral, snatched from the dark 
depths in a painful labor. After the ocean mount- 
ain thrusts its top above the surface of the sea 
the work of exploration is easy enough, and we 
may walk over hard ground as we study the new 
formation in the sunlight. Hitherto, in our desire 
to learn the secrets of the growth of Israel, we have 
been like men peering over the sides of their tiny 
boats into the depths of a sea that covers fascinat- 
ing mysteries ; watching the labors of the adepts 
who ever and anon bring up to the light some 
fresh fragments of a buried world. In the epoch 
that we have now reached Israel's growing life lifts 
itself above the level of tradition, and stands forth 
as solid history, on whose firm ground we can study 
for ourselves the making of a nation's religion. 

Israel's literary period opens for us with the 
prophets. Literary fragments float up to us from 
earlier days, but now, for the first time, we have 
whole books about whose date and authorship we 
are reasonably certain. The prophets introduced 
the literary craft. They wrote out, in their later 
years, the substance of the messages which they 
had borne the people. These brilliant pages teem 
with graphic descriptions of the actual usages, 
social and religious, of their age, so that there is no 
difficulty in reproducing with fair accuracy the 
salient features of the period. 



THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 185 

The popular religion was that composite of 
heathenisms already sketched in considering the 
previous period. The people continued to wor- 
ship the Power which all felt and owned, under 
the manifold forms which this Power assumes in 
nature's processes. Sun and moon and stars still 
arrested the awe which through them groped after 
God, and drew upon themselves the worship of 
the imagination. The worship of Jehovah had a 
special honor as the State religion, but it stood 
contentedly amid other forms of religion. In the 
service of Jehovah local shrines developed special 
usages. The "Uses" of Israel were as varied 
as the " Uses " of England before the Reforma- 
tion. No act of Uniformity was in operation in 
the realm. Idolatry was not the exception but 
the rule. The most popular symbol of Jehovah 
was an image of a bull. To the higher minds 
this bull was doubtless merely a symbol, ex- 
pressive of a striking phase of the sun's force, 
but to the mass of men it was probably the actual 
object of their adorations. The symbolism of the 
Jerusalem Temple was thoroughly idolatrous ; as, 
for example, the twelve oxen upholding the laver, 
and the horns of the altar, symbols drawn from 
the prevalent bull-worship ; the two columns in 
the court, and the cherubs, or cloud-dragons in 
the most holy place ; the cJia r manim, or sun- 
images, representing the rays of the sun in the 
shape of a cone, and the chariots and horses of 



186 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

the sun, a very ancient symbol familiar to us in 
Guido's Aurora/* 

Nor did the allegiance to Jehovah bar private 
usages of an idolatrous nature. The home of the 
average Israelite had its teraphim and other do- 
mestic divinities. The darker aspects of the pop- 
ular religion still held their ground against the 
growing light. Beneath the shadow of the Jeho- 
vah of the Ten Words, stood, unmolested, the im- 
ages fashioned by the appetites and passions; 
and men and women surrendered themselves to 
drunken orgies and sensual debauches, in honor 
of the deities of desire. As late as the time of 
Jeremiah, after nearly two centuries of prophetic 
teaching, there were in the sacred precincts of the 
temple the asJieras, or tree-poles, by which the 
priestesses of passion, as part of their religious 
offices, sold themselves to the frequenters of Je- 
hovah's house. + Below the holy city, King Ma- 
nasseh reared the image of Moloch, and human 
sacrifices were offered to placate the wrath of the 
Power which they ignorantly worshipped. 

Where religion was so largely a worship of the 
physical powers of nature, the life of the people 
would of necessity show an undeveloped ethical 

* The sun symbols may not have been permanent features of 
the Temple- worship at this period, though, from the probable 
identification of the early Jehovah with the sun, it seems likely 
that their presence there was no casual fact. 

f 2 Kings, xxiii. 6, 7. 



THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 187 

state. Drunkenness and debauchery continued 
common, the marriage bond was very elastic in 
the polite society of the capital, and selfishness 
haughtily overrode all considerations of meum and 
tuum in the mad chase of wealth. 

Unsatisfactory as the morals of the influential 
classes of society were, there is, however, no indi- 
cation of any such "ooze and thaw of wrong " as 
indicated a moribund condition in the nation. 

We must not make the mistake, so common 
concerning reformers, and regard the evils that 
were justly lashed by the prophets as prevail- 
ing throughout society. Had this been the case, 
where would the ethical forces of a new and 
higher life have risen ? Single preachers of so- 
cial righteousness might have arisen, like Savona- 
rola in Florence, under such conditions, but no 
general reform could have developed. The steady 
growth of the movement initiated by the great 
prophets shows that it sprang from no individuals, 
but from society ; that they merely led the reserve 
forces of virtue in the nation. The heart of the 
nation was doubtless sound, and growing more 
vigorously virtuous. Professor Thorold Eogers re- 
minds us that the period when a great outcry is 
heard against any social evil, is not that wherein 
the evil is at its height, for then there would 
probably be no power of protest, but rather that 
in which the recuperative forces of society are 
rallying to throw off the disorder from the body 



188 THE EIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

politic. Morality was in advance of religion at 
this time in Israel, and this interprets the move- 
ment which ensued to place religion in its proper 
position at the head of the march of progress. 

It was amid such a state of affairs that the 
great prophets appeared upon the stage of action, 
calling the nation to a higher religion. They 
were not so much philosophers, reasoning out a 
lofty intellectual conception of God, as preachers 
of righteousness, vitalizing from the moral nature 
the sense of the purity and justice of the Power 
in whom men lived and moved and had their be- 
ing. They turned the light of the inward law 
upon God, and revealed Him as its author. They 
led Virtue into the Temple, touched her lips with 
alive coal from off the altar, and from a tongue 
of fire men heard, "Thus saith the Lord." They 
revived the true Mosaic priesthood, which set 
apart conscience as the mediator between God 
and man. The seed that Moses planted budded 
and swelled toward its bloom. The prophetic 
writings show us men a-hungered after right- 
eousness, breathing out the worship of Jehovah 
into the worship of the Eternal, who loveth right- 
eousness. 

Isaiah carries this message from God : 

To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto 

me ? 
I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed 

beasts. 



THE EIGHT HISTOEICAL USE OP THE BIBLE. 189 

And I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of 
he-goats. 

When ye come to appear before me, 

Who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts ? 

Bring no more vain oblations ; 

Incense is an abomination unto me ; 

The new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I can- 
not endure ; 

It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. 

Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth ; 

They are a trouble unto me ; 

I am weary to bear them. 

And when ye spread forth your hands, 

I will hide mine eyes from you : 

Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear : 

Your hands are full of blood. 

Wash you, make you clean ; 

Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes : 

Cease to do evil ; learn to do well : 

Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, 

Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.* 

Micah voices the questions that men raised in 
his day, answering them with the new thought : 

Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord, 

And bow myself before the high God ? 

Shall I come before him with burnt offe rings, 

With calves of a year old ? 

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, 

Or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? 

Shall I give my first born for my transgression, 

The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul ? 

He hath showed thee, man, what is good, 

And what doth the Lord require of thee, 

* Isaiah, i. 11-17. 



190 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

But to do justly, and to love mercy, 
And to walk humbly with thy God ? * 

Two features of the work of the prophets bring 
out clearly their ethical inspiration. Israel was 
at this period being drawn, for the first time, into 
the currents created by the strife of the mammoth 
empires of Assyria and Egypt, in whose mael- 
strom she at length went down. Public affairs 
were becoming matters of international relation- 
ship. The prophets threw themselves heartily 
into the national politics, standing between the 
party of Assyria and the party of Egypt, as inde- 
pendents, concerned with the interests of neither 
faction, but seeking to lift both sides above the 
shifting sands of policy upon the firm ground of 
principle. They sought to lead the nation to turn 
aside from its dazzling dream of a brilliant foreign 
policy to the humbler tasks of internal reform; 
to induce the State to busy itself with the labor of 
redressing civic disorders and of building a com- 
munity of sober, pure, and just citizens, cultivat- 
ing peace and equity with other peoples, and fear- 
ing God. They were preachers to the corporate 
conscience of Israel, and dealt with subjects which 
the modern pulpit effeminately shuns. In strains 
of pure and passionate patriotism, they delighted 
to vision before the people the ideal State and its 
ideal King ; thus to lead the aspirations of the 

* Micah, vi. 6-8. 



THE EIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 191 

nation to a higher ambition than martial prowess 
and diplomatic craft. 

The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, 

The spirit of wisdom and understanding, 

The spirit of counsel and might, 

The spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; 

And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of 

the Lord: 
And he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, 
Neither reprove after the hearing of his ears : 
But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, 
And reprove with equity for the meek of the earth. 
And he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, 
And with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. 
And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, 
And faithfulness the girdle of his reins.* 

These Hebrew prophets made the right admin- 
istration of public affairs the essentially religious 
service which their devout student Gladstone de- 
clares them now to be. Because of this inspira- 
tion of civic life with religiousness, their books 
have become, as Coleridge called them, the States- 
man's Manual. 

At this period in Israel's history the social rev- 
olution attending the progress of all peoples from 
a simple to a complex organization was entailing 
its usual excesses, and alarming symptoms were 
showing themselves in the commonwealth. In 
earlier da>js Israel's tenure of land had been, like 
that of all peoples, communistic. Proprietorship 

* Isaiah, xi. 2-5. 



192 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

of the land was vested in the family, and then in 
the village community. There were no private 
fortunes and no private poverty. Life was sim- 
ple, and contented, and dull. Under the action of 
the usual social forces, this system had been grad- 
ually breaking up, through many generations. 
Property had mainly passed into personal posses- 
sion. Society had recrystallized around the indi- 
vidual. Individualism had developed its custom- 
ary tendencies to inequality. The ancient equality 
of the free farmers of Israel was already disap- 
pearing. Fortunes, undreamed of a couple of cent- 
uries earlier, were becoming common. Greed 
was pushing men beyond legitimate acquisition 
into respectable robbery. The old-time rights of 
commonalty were disappearing in pasture, and 
farming land, and forest. The village commons 
were being " enclosed " by local potentates. Mo- 
nopolies of the natural resources of all wealth, the 
inalienable dower of the people at large, were 
working their inevitable consequences. Below 
the wealthy class, which was rising to the top of 
society, there was forming at the bottom a new 
and unheard-of social stratum, the settlings of the 
struggle for existence ; a deposit of the feebleness 
and ignorance and innocence of the people. In 
the loss of the old sense of a commonwealth, the 
nation was breaking up into classes, alienated, un- 
sympathetic, hostile. Selfishness was threaten- 
ing ruin to the State. 



THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 193 

In the midst of these dangerous social tenden- 
cies the prophets came forward as " men of the 
people." Like brave Latimer at Paul's Cross, 
these fearless preachers stood in the market- 
places to denounce monopoly and the tyranny of 
capital. They were not affrighted by the hue and 
cry that, if human nature was the same then as 
now, was raised against them, in the name of the 
sacred rights of property. They were not beguiled 
by the sophisms of those who doubtless proved 
conclusively that the best interests of the people 
were being furthered by the fullest freedom of the 
able and crafty to enrich themselves ad libitum. 
They could not have stood an examination in po- 
litical economy, but they knew the heart of the 
whole matter, in a world whose core is the moral 
law. They saw, more or less clearly, that there 
could be no lasting wealth in a society which was 
not based upon a wide, deep common-wealth. 
They felt that the one clue to follow in every 
social problem was held by conscience. So they 
struck boldly at existing wrongs in the name of 
the Eternal Righteous One. 

Woe unto them that join house to house, 

That lay field to field 

Till there be no place, 

That they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth ! 

The Lord will enter into judgment 
With the ancients of his people and the princes thereof : 
For ye have eaten up the vineyard ; 
9 



194 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

The spoil of the poor is in your houses. 
What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, 
And grind the faces of the poor ? 
Saith the Lord God of hosts.* 

One word, constantly recurring through the 
prophets, reveals the secret of their enthusiasm. 
They lifted above the people the august and holy 
form of Justice, and called on men to follow her. 
They appealed to a force in men mightier than 
selfishnsss. They kindled the passion which had 
been always latent in Israel, since the day when 
Moses led forth the slaves of Egypt to found a 
nation of freemen. A new and lofty ideal mas- 
tered the minds of the better natures among the 
people. Over against the darkness of their age 
there rose a vision of a good time coming, when 
Justice should be throned on law, and selfishness 
be exorcised from the hearts of men who had 
learned the secret 

Of joy in widest commonalty spread. 

And this they did in the name of Jehovah. 
From Him they came with these messages con- 
cerning social obligations. The Eternal One who 
loved righteousness could be served in no other 
way than in furthering justice. Religion became 
social reform, aflame with the enthusiasm of holy 
ideals ; of ideals seen to be eternal realities, as the 

* Isaiah, v. 8 ; iii. 14, 15. 



THE EIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 195 

shadows cast by The Living God, moving on to 
accomplish the good pleasure of His will. 

To conserve the new spirit of brotherhood which 
they awakened, they embodied in the book of the 
Law, that constituted the Magna Charta of the 
Reformation, a development of a gracious usage of 
the people. From immemorial antiquity there had 
been a recognized right of the populace to the nat- 
ural yield of the soil in every seventh year. This 
common law they formally re-enacted, in the name 
of Jehovah, and added to it a provision for the re- 
lease of debtors in the sabbatical year.* 

"We shall see in the next period the fruitage of 
this new religion of social righteousness, in the 
remarkable legislation erf the Restoration. 

In these serious, strenuous secularities — so often 
neglected by the religious, or even opposed as ir- 
religious—which now were consecrated to the serv- 
ice of Jehovah, religion found its true sphere, 
and developed its latent forces. A new era 
opened. The abominations of religion in former 
times became the exceptions rather than the rule, 
and gradually disappeared from society. After 
Jeremiah we hear no more of impurities hiding 
under the altar, or of savage superstition seeking 
to please Jehovah by outraging the holiest in- 
stincts of human nature. Jehovah became the 
name for a conception of Deity so spiritual, so 

* Cf. Exodus, xxiii. 10, 11 (the earliest code) with Deuteron- 
omy, xy. 1-18. 



196 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

holy, that henceforth the student of Israel's his- 
tory should substitute — God. 

It is a most interesting study to place these 
great prophets in their chronological order, and 
trace the development of this ethical religion. As 
one after another they come upon the stage of ac- 
tion, they take up the great words of their masters 
and repeat them in their own way ; take up the 
great tasks of their predecessors and carry them 
on toward completion; leading religion into an 
ever deepening spirituality. The prophets of the 
eighth century group around Isaiah, under whose 
influence Hezekiah attempted a partial reforma- 
tion of the popular religion. The prophets of the 
seventh century group around Jeremiah, the mas- 
ter-spirit in the more thorough reformation car- 
ried out under Josiah. This second reformation 
achieved an institutional organization of ethical 
religion, that came just in time to create a body 
capable of holding the people together in loyalty 
to the true God, amid the break up of the nation. 

v. 

The Epoch of the Exile : B.C. 586-536. 

The conquest of the two sister kingdoms, with 
the carrying away of the influential portion of the 
people into exile, was a blessing in disguise. 
Israel was taken out of its petty provincialisms, 
its race insularity, and placed amid one of the 



THE EIGHT HISTOEICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 197 

most highly cultivated civilizations of the ancient 
world. The fertile plain of Mesopotamia had 
been from immemorial antiquity the seat of great 
enterprises. Civilization had developed there 
when surrounding peoples had not emerged from 
semi-barbarism. Like the Troy beneath Troy in 
the Ilium ruins, we find here successive civiliza- 
tions resting each upon the debris of an earlier 
order. The descriptions of ancient historians, to- 
gether with the explorations of late years, make 
very vivid the scenes amid which the captive Is- 
raelites walked. 

Babylon was a city which might well astonish 
and captivate strangers. It was of immense size, 
being surrounded by a wall forty, or possibly 
sixty, miles in circumference. This wall was 
nearly three hundred feet high, and was broad 
enough to allow a chariot with four horses to turn 
easily upon it. The streets were wide and straight, 
crossing each other at right angles, and were lined 
with houses several stories in height, painted in 
all the colors of the rainbow. Trees and gardens 
were so plentiful as to give the whole city the ap- 
pearance of a park. The grounds of the imperial 
palace covered an area of seven miles round, in 
the centre of the* city. The largest temple the 
world has ever seen rose in pyramidal form six 
hundred feet in air. The broad and shaded 
streets were resplendent with the pomp and pa- 
geantry of the court of a mighty empire, and were 



198 THE EIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

alive with the bustle of the traffic of the known 
world. 

Libraries and museums garnered the treasures 
of art and literature, of science and philosophy, 
accumulated through centuries. On every hand 
were the tokens of a refined and cultivated civili- 
zation, venerable with age. In the temples a rich 
ritual celebrated an elaborate worship, while learn- 
ed priests waited to explain the profound philo- 
sophic and poetic truths of the sacred symbols. 

Transported to such surroundings, Israel re- 
ceived the mental shock which an American of a 
generation past experienced on first visiting Eu- 
rope. The influence of this surprise was very 
marked. Israel's genius flowered in this strange 
soil. Her literary life centres in Babylonia. The 
second Isaiah wrote there his immortal pages. 
The unknown authors of the noble histories, whose 
charm never stales, fashioned there the traditions 
and records of the past into their present shape. 
There the great legal codification was carried out, 
and the institutional system of Israel perfected. 
A new circle of ideas show themselves at work in 
the mind of the people while in exile. From Chal- 
dean scholars the Israelites probably learned the 
ancient legends of the Beginnings, which they 
worked over in their profounder religious con- 
sciousness into the simple and spiritual forms in 
which they stand in Genesis. From Persia they 
either received bodily the system of angelology 



THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 199 

that thenceforth appears in their writings, or they 
received the quickening influence of a kindred re- 
ligion upon the thoughts latent in their beliefs.* 

These intellectual influences wrought directly 
upon the development of Israel's religion. In the 
revelation of the prosperous life of these alien peo- 
ples, the chosen race saw herself but one member 
of the great world family. Persia's ethical and spir- 
itual religion discovered to the nobler natures of 
Israel the very ideals which they and their fathers 
had long been strenuously seeking. These heathen 
were worshipping the same source and standard 
of goodness before which they themselves had been 
doing homage. A new sense of human brother- 
hood stirred within the exclusive race, and with it 
the perception that there is one Father of all men. 
Religion threw off all lingering polytheistic no- 
tions and soared to the vision of One God. Mono- 
theism dates as a clear consciousness from this 
era.f It was saved from becoming an abstract, 
philosophic conception, merging good and evil in 
a common source, by the stern ethical dualism of 
the Persians. Though there be but one God, who 
is ultimately to triumph over all evil, yet, said 

* Tke latter seems the probable influence of Persia. At all 
events, from this time Hebrew literature shows the gradual 
development of an angelic hierarchy. 

f The comparison of the earlier prophetic writings with the 
exilic prophecies, and with the later writings, such as Jonah, 
Ecclesiastes, &c. , will illustrate this change. 



200 THE EIGHT HISTOKICAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 

these Persians, evil is a present power in creation, 
organized and active, waging constant warfare with 
the powers of goodness. Earth is the scene of 
the battle between light and darkness, in which 
each man must play his part, for weal or for woe. 
These high ethical and religious conceptions 
were nourished from the deeps of sorrow out of 
which the people cried bitterly to God. Their 
nation was crushed, their homes were broken up, 
and they themselves were captives in a strange 
land. Israel might have said, 

A deep distress hath humanized my soul. 

All tender and gracious and holy humanities 
sprang forth from the hard Hebrew nature under 
this deep distress. The national ideal changed 
wholly. The old dream of a puissant king passed 
from the minds of the better men, and we hear 
little of it thenceforth in the writings of the nation. 
In the place of it arose the vision of the Righteous, 
Suffering, Servant of God — the Nation trained in 
the school of sorrow for a sacrificial mission*, and 
charged to lead the peoples of the earth into the 
knowledge of the Eternal, who loveth righteous- 
ness. 

As the crown and consummation of religion, the 
holy hope of life beyond the grave dawned in this 
night of suffering, gleaming toward the day of 
Him who brought life and immortality to light.* 

* EzekiePs vision of the valley of dry bones is the earliest ap- 



THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 201 

Around this deepening and enriching life the 
remarkable body of the prophetic-priestly system 
was fashioned, as the law of the new nation when 
it should gain once more the old home. It looked 
to the formation of a holy people ; through its 
minute direction of the daily life, its sacrificial 
symbolism charged with spiritual significances, its 
sacred books for the instruction of the people, its 
order of scribes devoted to this new study, its 
synagogues or meeting-houses for oral teaching 
and for prayer — now for the first time elevated 
into an act of public worship co-ordinate in dig- 
nity with sacrifice. 

True to its old instinct, Israel's religion, first 
seeking to build up individual holiness, turned 
then to build up social righteousness. The 
ideals of the great prophets, which had been 
long working in the minds and hearts of the 
leaders of the people, were now embodied in 
the priestly legislation. The traditional com- 
munal system of land-holding was established 
as the legal basis for the new nation. The land 
of Israel was nationalized, and its title vested in 
God, from whom individuals received the right of 
limited usufruct. It could not be sold outright. 
No man could gain a fee-simple proprietorship. 
The seventh year was continued as a year of fal- 
low, when the poor were to have the right of past- 

pearance of this thought in any writing of whose date we are 
certain. 



202 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

urage and of such growth as the land spontane- 
ously brought forth. At the end of seven sabbat- 
ical periods, in round numbers every fifty years, 
all purchases of land were to lapse, and the soil 
return to the original possessors. At the same 
time all debtors were to pass through a general 
act of bankruptcy and go forth free men. Inter- 
est was not to be allowed on loans made between 
brother Israelites. By these provisions both vil- 
leinage or land-serfdom and the slavery of debtor 
classes to capital were to be prevented in the new 
nation. This legislation of the restoration was 
" to the end that there be no poor among you." * 

* And thou shalt number seven sabbaths of years unto thee, 
seven times seven years ; and the space of the seven sabbaths of 
years shall be unto thee forty and nine years. Then shalt thou 
cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the 
seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trum- 
pet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the 
fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto 
all the inhabitants thereof : it shall be a jubilee unto you ; and 
ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return 
every man unto his family. A jubilee shall that fiftieth year be 
unto you : ye shall not sow, neither reap that which groweth of 
itself in it, nor gather the grapes in it of the vine undressed. 
For it is the jubilee ; it shall be holy unto you : ye shall eat the 
increase thereof out of the field. In the year of this jubilee ye 
shall return every man unto his possession. And if thou sell 
ought unto thy neighbor, or buyest ought- of thy neighbor's 
hand, ye shall not oppress one another : According to the 
number of years after the jubilee thou shalt buy of thy neighbor, 
and according unto the number of years of the fruits he shal] 
&11 unto tlide : According to the multitude of years thdu shalt 



THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 203 

To such impracticable ideals, for that age, did 
this exilic movement of the new religion look, 

increase the price thereof, and according to the fewness of years 
thou shalt diminish the price of it : for according to the number 
of the years of the fruits doth he sell unto thee. Ye shall not 
therefore oppress one another ; but thou shalt fear thy God : for 
I am the Lord your God. 
****** ## * 

The land shall not be sold for ever : for the land is mine ; for 
ye are strangers and sojourners with me. And in all the land of 
your possession ye shall grant a redemption for the land. 
# * # # * * * * # 

And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with 
thee ; then thou shalt relieve him : yea, though he be a stranger, 
or a sojourner ; that he -may live with thee. Take thou no usury 
of him, or increase : but fear thy God ; that thy brother may 
live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, 
nor lend him thy victuals for increase. I am the Lord your 
God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, to give 
you the land of Canaan, and to be your God. And if thy brother 
that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee ; thou 
shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant : But as an 
hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall 
serve thee unto the year of jubilee : And then shall he depart 
from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return 
unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall 
he return. For they are my servants, which I brought forth out 
of the land of Egypt : they shall not be sold as bondmen. Thou 
shalt not rule over him with rigor ; but shalt fear thy God. — 
Leviticus, xxv. 8 et seq. 

Fenton, " Early Hebrew Life," has, I think, given the clue 
through the difficulties of the jubilee-year legislation. He traces 
the early communal character of Hebrew society, its gradual 
break-up under the encroachments of manorial lords, and the 
natural efforts of the people to regain their communal rights. 
" But how remedy the evil ? Hdw restore to the communities 



204 THE EIGHT HISTOEICAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 

with sober, strenuous, systematic effort for their 
realization ; and therein may we see its intensity 
of moral life. 

VI. 

The period of the Restoration, from B.C. 536. 

The common notion is that this period of Israel's 
history was practically a vacuum, and that through 
five centuries the nation experienced no further 
development. In reality, it was an exceedingly 
active period, characterized by most important 
developments. Politically it was a period of con- 
stantly changing influences. Israel was scarcely 
ever really independent during these centuries. 
Her changes were the changes from one master to 
another. But this very subjection aided her intel- 
lectual development, as she was thus brought 
under the direct action of foreign ideas. Her 

their old rights and privileges, without unduly trenching upon 
rights and possessions that had since been acquired ? The year 
of Jubilee is the Hebrew solution of the problem," (p 71). It 
was a compromise ; the old seventh year communal right ad- 
journed to seven times seven years, and enlarged. Fenton quotes 
a curious survival, in the borough of Newtown-upon- Ayr, of this 
very compromise between the old and the new social systems — a 
Scottish Jubilee. 

It is a queer sign of the disproportionate development of in- 
dividual religion in our current Christianity, that this social and 
economic legislation should have been so spiritualized away as to 
leave no consciousness of its original character in the minds of 
those who sing in our prayer-meetings that " The year of Jubilee 
is come." 



THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 205 

rapid growth of population forced upon her a sys- 
tem of emigration, that drew off her youth to the 
great centres of the world and established large 
colonies in every leading city. Israel was never 
left to settle down again into provincialism, but 
was stirred by the currents of the great world of 
thought that poured in upon her from Greece and 
Egypt, from Rome and the far East. "A cross- 
fertilization of ideas " was thus carried on by 
Providence. The result of grafting the richest 
varieties of thought upon such a sturdy stock 
could not fail of proving something rare and rich. 
As was natural from such conditions, the 
thought of the nation took on new forms. Calm 
study of nature and man, and rational speculation 
on the great problems of life displaced impas- 
sioned and imaginative thought. Prophecy gave 
way to philosophy. The sages became the teachers 
of men. The third class of books in the Old Tes- 
tament Canon, known by the Jews as the Writings, 
belong to this period ; Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, 
Esther, Jonah, Daniel, etc. To this period also 
belongs the Apocrypha, which contains some noble 
books. These varied writings show, when critic- 
ally studied, a direct bearing on the problems 
that we know were occupying the mind of the 
nation during this period, and illustrate the tend- 
encies working among the people. We thus see, 
plainly, the growth of the seeds of noble thought 
which were sown in the national consciousness 



206 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

during the exile, and the growth, of the rich germs 
wafted into Judea from Greece and Egypt. 

We can trace the development of the circle of 
ideas which, later on, crystallized, under the ethic- 
al and spiritual force of Jesus into the theology 
of Christianity. We watch the embryonic stages 
of this thought-body, which at length awaited 
only the breathing within it of an informing spirit 
to issue in a new and noble religion. 

Nor was this period of the Restoration merely 
one of intellectual development, else there would 
have been no such issue as came at length. It 
was a period of quiet ethical and spiritual devel- 
opment. No prophet arose, indeed, to quicken 
Israel, but the ancient prophets still spake from 
the institutions into which they had breathed 
somewhat of their spirit, and from the holy books 
which were read in every synagogue, and learned 
in every home. The temple worship of this pe- 
riod retained the old forms of sacrifice; but charged 
them with spiritual significances which are difficult 
for us to associate with such bloody rites, did we 
not know how easily the religious spirit adapts 
itself to any outward ceremonies, and transforms 
them into its own life. The soul spurns the sym- 
bols to which it yet will cling, and soars beyond 
the poor height to which the laboring wings of 
ordinance and ritual can carry it. The profound 
spiritual life w T hich was awakened in the exile 
flooded these low forms with supernal light. They 



THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 207 

spoke to men of better sacrifices than tlie blood 
of bulls and lambs — of sins slaughtered and fleshly 
powers 'consumed, of lives of men offered up in 
purity to God. They whispered to the soul of 
the holiness of God, and of His forgiveness as 
well ; and, in their powerlessness to satisfy the 
spiritual needs suggested by them, they kept men's 
eyes upon the future, looking for the Prophet 
greater than Moses, who would surely come from 
behind the veil with a new word from God. Out 
of such thoughts and feelings the temple worship 
drew upon itself a noble service of song, of whose 
ethical and spiritual beauty we can judge from the 
temple hymnal. You and I to-day have sung some 
of the very hymns which those Jews chanted 
around their brazen altar. Through these psalms 
of many ages, gathered into a hymnal of unri- 
valled nobleness, the worship of Israel ascended 
in the aspirations of the people after purity and 
righteousness. If the choirs sang of the Shepherd 
of Israel, it was not merely in the praises of the 
providential care felt over the chosen people, but 
in the thankfulness of souls, because of the assur- 
ance of His spiritual guidance : 

He shall convert my soul, 

And bring me forth in the paths of righteousness for Kis 
name's sake. 

If they chanted the glories of the House of God, 
it was because thither the tribes came up, with this 
desire in the hearts of the worshippers* : 



208 THE EIGHT HISTOKICAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 

Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, 

So longeth my soul after thee, God. 

My soul is athirst for God. Yea, even for the living God : 

When shall I come to appear before the presence of God ? 

send out thy light and thy truth : 

Let them lead me ; 

Let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles. 

Then will I go up unto the altar of God, 

Unto God, the gladness of my joy : 

Yea, upon the harp will I praise thee, 

God, my God. 

The temple, however, was but a part, and prac- 
tically a small part, of the institutionalism of re- 
ligion in this period. This was the era of the 
scribe rather than of the priest. Ezra came back 
to Jerusalem with a new treasure, "The Law." 
Around this sacred book, which soon added to 
itself the writings of the Prophets, the religious 
life of the nation really crystallized. To read and 
expound it, now that "no vision came to the 
prophets from The Eternal," became the highest 
office of religion, an office purely ethical and 
spiritual. In every town of the land the Meeting- 
house arose, opening its doors upon the Sabbath 
and on market days, to the villagers, who gath- 
ered for a simple service of instruction and devo- 
tion. The service began with a short prayer, 
which was followed by the recitation of some por- 
tions of " The Law," setting forth the great be- 
liefs and duties of the Jewish religion — a confes- 



THE EIGHT HISTORICx^L USE OF THE BIBLE. 200 

sion of faith, in other words. After this came the 
long prayer, which, in later times, became litur- 
gical ; and then the reading of the lesson for the 
day from "The Law," with its interpretation, 
ivhen Hebrew had become a dead language. Then 
followed a reading from the Prophecies, and a 
homily or sermon based upon the passage read. 
In their synagogues the Jews worshipped much 
as we are doing in this church to-day. 

Through such a quiet deepening of the life of the 
people was the nation preparing for its final devel- 
opment of religion. 

True it is that in the latter part of this period 
the nation showed unmistakable signs of being 
overtrained. The hedge made about the Law had 
fenced men off from one thing after another until, 
to men who were anxious not to offend, life be- 
came a weary burden. There was scarcely an 
action that might not involve sin. The natural 
effect of externalizing the commands cf conscience 
followed ; and the ethical aims which had been 
sought were well nigh lost in the routine of form 
and ceremony, and in the fine-spun distinctions of 
belief and conduct. A great-souled Jew found, 
later on, as hosts of his fellow-countrymen had 
found before him, that by the works of the Tho- 
rah (law or teaching) could no flesh be justified. 
The very Book which had fed so deep a life had 
come to stand between the soul and God, a barrier 
to the fresh, free inspirations from on high. Ee- 



210 THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

ligion had run out upon the surface, and was dy- 
ino\ But it was as the tassels wither and whiten 

o 

when the corn is ripe within the husk and ready 
to seed down a new season. 

Plainly, by every sign, Israel's long gestation of 
Religion was nearing its appointed term. All the 
elements had been developed, one after another, 
for a Universal Religion, and there was nothing- 
more to be done but to await the coming to the birth. 
As plainly, by every sign, the world-conditions 
were at length found for a safe issue of the " holy 
thing" which Israel so long had carried within 
her bosom. There was needed a man to body 
these scattered elements, to fuse the forces of the 
nation into a personality, to live the dreams which 
a race had visioned. Religion is never a code 
nor a theory, it is always a life. The ideal relig- 
ion awaited the ideal man. He came ! As the 
nation held the holy child Jesus in her arms, 
joying that a MAN was born into the world, she 
might have been overheard singing : 

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, 
According to thy word : 
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, 
. Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; 
A light to lighten the Gentiles, 
And the glory of thy people Israel. 

The historical reality of Jesus is unquestiona- 
ble. The essential features of his life and thought 
ar& distinctly outlined through the mist of time, 



THE EIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 211 

and above the clouds of legend that hang low 
upon the horizon where he disappeared. The 
threefold tradition preserves a clear-cut image of 
the Son of Man. We see One in whom the ideals 
of Israel found a perfect realization. He brought 
to the flower the conception of religion whose 
germ lay seeded down in the Ten Words of Moses. 
In him worship and aspiration were one. He 
lived the ethical and spiritual religion after which 
the nation had patiently striven, through prophet 
and priest and sage, through psalmist and through 
scribe. He lived the vision of human good- 
ness which holy men of old had never suc- 
ceeded in bringing down into the flesh, beyond a 
blurred blocking in of the heavenly ideal. He lived 
man's dream of goodness so gloriously that he be- 
came a more than man, in whom was felt the coming 
nigh of the Eternal Holy One. The human form 
divine, to which mankind aspired, took on its true 
and awful splendor, as the image of the God whom 
the conscience worshipped. Every passing "I 
would be," of the saints of old looked forth, trans- 
figured, from the face of One who said " I AM." 

True to Israel's ancient dream, around this 
righteous suffering servant of the Eternal, the 
nations gathered, to be taught of God. The souls 
to whom He gave power to become the sons of 
God became the family of the Heavenly Father, 
in which there was " neither Greek nor Jew, cir- 
cumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scyth- 



212 THE EIGHT HISTOEICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

ian, bond nor free, but Christ was all and in all." 
In this holy brotherhood of the children of the 
All-Father, we moderns take our places round our 
elder brother; feeling sure that we have found 
the spiritual band or religion wherein society is to 
be held together, through each man's holding 
hard by the God who is the perfection of His own 
highest dreams. 

Such then being the fact of Israel's historic 
travail and such her issue, our fathers' sense of 
the supreme significance of Christ in human his- 
.tory takes on a new light in our new knowledge. 

The problem of religion is to find such a knowl- 
edge of the Being in whom we live and move and 
have our being, as shall lead men's awe before 
this mysterious Power up into an awe of a Power 
whom we may rightly worship, trust and love. 
To find the key to this problem is to hold the 
secret of all the puzzles of our weary world. Be- 
fore the Power " manifest in the flesh " in Jesus 
Christ, our souls hush, in an awe which breathes 
within us worship, trust and love. And if this 
Power be the very Power felt in history and in 
nature, whose ways therein are so often baffling 
to the moral sense, then all is well. But, if this 
be so, the holy Power who is shrined in Christ 
must show the features of the Mind which taber- 
nacles in nature. There can be no contradiction. 
Unquestionably an essential characteristic of the 



THE EIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 213 

Mind iii nature is tlie method of its action. There 
is a reign of Law. The highest generalization of 
the methods of this law which man has reached re- 
veals this Power as acting, through every sphere, 
in continuous progressive development. One word 
embodies this supreme generalization — evolu- 
tion. Christianity must fit into this universal 
order. Otherwise it either denies that order, 
which denial cannot be received ; or it is denied 
by that order, which denial is very certain to be 
increasingly received. God " cannot deny Him- 
self!" "I change not." 

Here is where Christianity's hold of the human 
mind hinges in our age. The old reading of the 
history of the preparation for Christ separated 
"those whom God hath joined together" The 
new reading of that preparation restores the need- 
ful unity. 

Christianity is no exception amid the general 
order of nature. It follows that providential plan. 
It grows from seed to flower. Its beginnings were 
in a simple conception of ethical religion begotten 
in a heathen people through Moses. In the 
womb of the nation it lay dormant till the time 
for quickening came. Thenceforward it slowly 
assimilated the vital forces and nutritive elements 
of the organic life within which it grew, until the 
hour arrived when it burst the maternal womb, a 
perfect birth. Christianity is a genuine historic 
evolution. 



214 THE EIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

When we have said this, have we accounted 
for it? To none save those who, in master- 
ing the methods of a process of evolution, fancy- 
that they have mastered its sources. To none 
save those who, familiarizing themselves with the 
order of life, think that they have resolved its 
nature. The wiser portion of mankind do not find 
in How a synonym for Whence. We still ask 
whence ? When we see the issue of a long and 
complicated plan, we postulate a planning mind. 
When we trace, through the sketches and studies 
in a studio, the gradual embodiment of a vision of 
loveliness, which at length looks down upon us in 
its perfect grace from the canvas on the wall, we 
cannot be persuaded out of our conviction that 
some artist has lived and labored in this studio, 
patiently evolving his great dream. When we see~ 
a new-born child we do not think that we have 
learned its parentage in being told about its 
mother. We want to know who fathered it into 
being. 

What mind planned this process of a nation's 
growth into a universal religion ? What artist 
dreamed this ethical and spiritual ideal? Who 
begat this "holy thing" conceived in Israel and 
born of her at length in glorious beauty ? If 
Moses was the human parent of this marvellous 
child, who fathered the " essential Christ " in 
Moses ? Who is the real father of Jesus Christ ? 

Our only answer must be that given of old : 



THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 215 

When the fulness of the time was come God sent forth His 

son The true Light, which lighteth every man, was 

coming on into the world And the Word became flesh 

and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of 
the only-begotten of the Father) full of grace and truth. 

If this then be the true interpretation of the 
evolution of the Christ, we hold, in the doctrine of 
the Incarnation, the secret of all evolution. "We 
must read the story of every development in the 
light of the highest life of man, himself the highest 
life of nature. Nature is in travail with an ideal 
which rose not in the molten suns, though per- 
chance it did rise through them. 

The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together 
until now. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth 
for the manifestation of the sons of God. 

Man is in travail with an ideal which rose not 
in the anthropoid apes, though it may have risen 
through them. A finer, larger, nobler man is 
growing within the man that is. 

The Universal Man is now coming to be a real being in the 
individual mind. 

Mankind, which is one physically and mentally, 
is one morally and spiritually. All varieties of 
man are built upon one ethical type. The vir- 
tues are cosmopolitan. . One human ideal looms 
above and before all races, though refracted 
differently in the changing atmospheres of earth. 
"Within the saints one dream of goodness forms. 



216 THE EIGHT HISTORICAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 

Over tlie seers and sages one vision of the source 
of lruroan goodness rises. Through the clouds of 
earth one Infinite and Eternal Form shapes itself 
to the wise. As men rise they meet. The race- 
souls are strangely alike. Socrates and Buddha 
are brothers. Humanity is in travail with one 
Human Ideal and one Divine Image, and these 
twain are one. The great Mother sings to her- 
self : 

But he, the man-child glorious, 

Where tarries he the while? 
The rainbow shines his harbinger, 

The sunset gleams his smile. 

My boreal lights leap upward, 

Forth right my planets roll, 
And still the man-child is not born, 

The summit of the Whole. 

I travail in pain for him, 

My creatures travail and wait; 
His couriers come by squadrons, 

He comes not to the gate. 

"Will Humanity come to the birth with her be- 
loved son? "Who that reads the story of the 
coming of the Hebrew Christ can doubt it ? "What 
miscarriage can befall her who is nursed by Nat- 
ure and tended by Providence? What w r ill the 
Coming Man be like ? We have seen his face 
break through the flesh for a moment. On the 
shoulders of the race will rest the head of Christ. 
What shall be said when the morning stars sing 



THE RIGHT HISTORICAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 217 

together, and all the sons of God shout for joy that 
MAN is born upon the earth ? 

The Holy Ghost hath come upon thee, Humanity, and the 
power of the Highest hath overshadowed thee ; therefore also, 
that holy thing which is born of thee, shall be called the Son 
of God. 

This, at least, is my reading of nature and of 
history in the light of the completed evolution of 
the Christ. The normal growth through history 
of the Ideal Man, is the incarnation of the Divine 
Man. The mischievous antithesis between the 
realms of the natural and the supernatural, that 
kept the world's thought from crystallizing around 
the world's soul, disappears in an Order which is 
at once natural in all its processes, and supernat- 
ural in its source and plan and energy. 

"We hold the key to all earth's problems in the 
vision of God which, gleaming through nature 
and through man, dawns in the face of Jesus 
Christ. Over Him — in whom the Human Ideal 
becomes the Divine Image, and the most perfect 
dream of human goodness is the revelation of 
earth's God — the Eternal One breaks silence, 
whispering to our souls : 

This is my Beloved Son : Hear Him ! 
10 



VII. 

&l)e ftigijt <£if)kal ana 0jnritual 
Use of tl)e Bible. 



It is impossible to forget the noble enthusiasm with which 
this dangerous heretic, as he was regarded in England, grasped 
the small Greek Testament which he had in his hand as we en- 
tered, and said: " In this little book is contained all the wisdom 
of the world." 

Stanley: "History of the Jewish Church," III. x. 
[Reminiscence of a visit to Ewald.] 
Truth, not eloquence, is to be sought for in Holy Scripture. 
We should rather search after our profit in the Scriptures, than 

subtilty of speech Search not who spoke this or that, 

but mark what is spoken. 

A Kempis : " Imitation of Christ," Ch. V. 
Do not hear for any other end but to become better in your 
life, and to be instructed in every good work, and to increase in 
the love and service of God. 

Jeremy Taylor: "Holy Living," Ch. IV. Sect. iv. 

We search the world for truth : we cull 

The good, the pure, the beautiful 

From graven stone and written scroll, 

From all old flower-fields of the soul ; 

And, weary seekers of the best, 

We come back laden from our quest, 

To find that all the sages said, 

Is in the Book our mothers read. 

Whittier : "Miriam." 




VII. 

Mf)t m%\)X iEtf)tcal antr Spiritual ese cf 
tije 23tMe. 

" From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which 
are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is 
in Christ Jesus."— 2 Timothy, iii. 15. 

|HE right use of the Bible is admirably stated 
by St. Paul. These books do not make one 
learned in any knowledge — they make one 
wise in life. The Jewish tradition concern- 
ing Solomon's choice expressed a deep truth. Wis- 
dom is the supreme benediction to be sought in 
life. Invaluable as is knowledge, it is as a means 
to an end. Knowledge provides for man the ma- 
terial out of which Wisdom, using " the best 
means to attain the best ends," builds a noble life. 
To have the mind clear, the judgment just, the 
conscience true, the will strong, so that we may 
sight the goal of life, may learn the laws by which 
it is to be won, and may firmly seek it, steadfast 
amid all seductions — this is wisdom. 

Would that for one single day, we may have lived in this 
world as we ought. 

221 



222 ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

Tims prays the author of the Imitation of Christ ; 
and in so praying he is sighing after wisdom. 

This culture of wisdom is the aim of the books 
which together form the Bible. They reveal to 
our vision the best ends in life, and point us to 
the best means of winning those high aims. They 
clear the atmosphere of mists, disclose to us our 
bearings, and fill our souls with the afflatus which 
wafts us toward "the haven where we would be." 
These books are rightly called by Paul, the " Holy 
Scriptures," the scriptures of holiness, the writings 
whose genius is goodness. Their charm is " the 
beauty of holiness," the graciousness of Goodness 
as she unveils herself therein. And this genius 
of gracious Goodness which irradiates the inner 
court of this temple, lays such a spell upon the 
souls of men inasmuc has she is seen to be the 
very daughter of God ; according to the soliloquy 
overheard by mortal ears, wherein Wisdom sings : 

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way, 
Before His work of old. 

Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him, 

And I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him. 

Religion becomes the worship of the God who 
is the source and standard of goodness, the love 
of the Eternal who loveth righteousness, the child's 
crying out into the dark — O righteous Father. 

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom. 

The Bible is the choicest extant literature of 



ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 223 

the people of religion, tlie record and embodiment 
of the evolution of ethical worship, through its 
varied moods and tenses, into its perfect type in 
Jesus Christ our Lord. The Bible-books form, 
therefore, the classics of the soul, in which we are 
to study the nature and secret of goodness ; the 
manual which every earnest man and woman, intent 
on building character, should use habitually for 
ethical culture, and for the ethical worship which 
is its inspiration. This is the truest use of the 
Bible. 

The intellectual use of the Bible, in critical and 
historical studies, is legitimate and needful. Rea- 
son should lay the bases for faith. Knowledge must 
rear the altar on which worship is to be lighted. 
Theology shapes religion. It is all important, 
therefore, that the books which the intellect chiefly 
uses to found and form its thoughts of God should 
be rightly used, so as to give man right concep- 
tions of the Divine Being, and to waken right feel- 
ings toward Him. This intellectual use of the 
Bible is not for scholars alone. There is no longer 
any isolated class of scholars. All educated peo- 
ple are now taken into the confidence of the learned, 
in every sphere of knowledge. The average man 
will reason about the great mysteries quite as- 
much as the scholar ; perhaps more than the true 
scholar, and with more insistent dogmatism. To 
the issue of that simpler, nobler Religion of Christ 



224 ETHICAL AXD SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

which, is struggling to the birth within the womb 
of Christianity, in the travail throes that are upon 
our age, it is of vital moment that all intelligent 
: people should learn to use their Bibles intelligent- 
I ly ; in a knowledge of the nature of its writings, 
and in reasonable reasonings therefrom. There- 
fore I have spoken concerning the critical and the 
historical uses of these sacred writings. 

But, when this knowledge is won and duly em- 
ployed in our theologizings, the truest use of the 
Bible remains for us to make, to our highest 
pleasure and profit. It is the book of religion, 
not of theology ; save as it records the one authori- 
tative Epistle of Theology, the "Word of God, the 
Christ. It is not a body of divinity, it is the soul 
of divinity. To use the Bible critically and his- 
torically for our theologizings, is, after all, to 
use it, however rightly, for its secondary and not 
its primary purpose. Religion — as the awed sense 
of the Eternal Power and Order revealed in 
nature, the Infinite Goodness and Righteousness 
revealed in man — is the art of the soul ; its finest 
feelings, its loftiest imaginations, its noblest en- 
thusiasms, its profoundest tragedies thrown out 
into the cry of the human after God. 

There is a science in the sculptor's art. It is 
doubtless needful that this art should be studied 
for the sake of its science. Artists, however, 
may be glad that Winckelmann has analyzed the 
Apollo Belvedere, and has given them the laws of 



ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 225 

proportion deduced from this human form divine ; 
leaving them free to feast upon its beauty. For in 
the scientific study of art, art itself may be lost. 
Some great figure-painters have been unwilling 
that their pupils should study anatomy ; fearing 
that the bones would stick through the flesh in 
their paintings. 

This danger shows itself plainly in all critical 
and historical uses of the Bible, in the old-fash- 
ioned as in the new-fashioned study of the Bible. 

The international series of Sunday-school les- 
sons burden the brief hours of the Lord's Day with 
a mass of matter, w r hich may or may not be true 
knowledge about the Bible, but which certainly is 
not the true religion of the Bible. A child may 
learn the tables of the Israelitish Kings, the geog- 
raphy of the Holy Land, and the architect's plans 
of the temple of Jerusalem, and may be learning 
nothing whatever of the real religion which is 
shrined within the Bible. That is very simple : 

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and 
with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: And thy neigh- 
bor as thyself. 

The time spent on these more or less interesting 
matters may rob the child of his one weekly op- 
portunity of learning to use the Holy Scriptures 
so as to become wise unto salvation. To use their 
words of wise men, and their tales of holy men, to 
inspire the love of goodness as the love of God, 
this and this alone is to teach religion from the 



226 ETHICAL AKD SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

Bible. Bread that consists of two-thirds bran and 
one-third white flour is eminently laxative ; but it 
is generally supposed that this age is lax enough 
| in its hold of truth. A little more wheat and a 
little less bran, ye good doctors, might strengthen 
the constitutions of our children. 

The new study of the Bible is perhaps even 
more in danger of missing its real secret. An 
interest in the literature and history of Israel may 
divert the mind from that which is, after all, the 
heart of these " letters," and the core of this 
history. 

Fear God and keep His commandments ; for this is the whole 
duty of man. 

Of this danger I think that I see signs, in some 
of the great masters to whom we owe our new 
criticism, in some of the manuals which are popu- 
larizing it, and in some of the gifted preachers who 
are reconstructing theology around it. The science 
of religion is absorbing too much of the life that 
should go into the art of religion ; and we have 
fine forms of thought, mantled with flabby flesh of 
feeling, in which no red blood of holy passion 
pulses. 

To read Homer with a view of understanding the 
fables of superstition, and of interpreting the 
mythology of the ancients, may have been needful 
for the later Greeks, who would preserve religion 
from the death that was stealing over it, in the 



ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 227 

divorce of the educated and the popular thought 
of the Grecian Bible. Such a use of Homer, how- 
ever, must have missed the essential charm of 
Homer — the immortal poetry of these heroic le- 
gends ; the breath of fresh, simple, wholesome 
human life which animates them, and which 
through them inspired men to brave and noble 
being. Socrates saw this in his day. 

" I beseech you to tell me, Socrates," said Phaedrus, "do you 
believe this tale ? " " The wise are doubtful," answered Socrates, 
" and I should not be singular if, like them, I also doubted. I 
might have a rational explanation. . . . Now I have certainly 
nob time for such inquiries ; shall I tell you why ? I must first 
know myself, as the Delphian inscription says. To be curious 
about that which is not my business while I am still in ignorance 
of my own self, would be ridiculous."* 

"Wisely speaks the finest Biblical critic of Eng- 
land in our day : 

No one knows the truth about the Bible who does not know 
how to enjoy the Bible ; and he who takes legend for history, 
and who imagines Moses, or Isaiah, or David, or Paul, or Peter, 
or John, to have written Bible-books which they did not write, 
but who knows how to enjoy the Bible deeply, is nearer the truth 
about the Bible than the man who can pick it all to pieces but 
who cannot enjoy it. ... His work is to learn to enjoy and* 
turn to his benefit the Bible, as the Word of the Eternal. f 

The right use of the Bible is to feed religion. 
Coleridge said : 

* The Dialogues of Plato : Jowett's edition, II. 106. 
f Matthew Arnold in Contemporary Review, xxiv. 800 ; xxv. 
503. 



228 ETHICAL AKD SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

Eeligion, in its widest sense, signifies the act and the habits 
of reverencing the invisible, as the highest both in oursslves 
and in nature.* 

The use of tlie Bible then is to ennoble our 
ideals, to quicken our aspirations, to clear the illu- 
sions of the senses, to dissipate the glamor of the 
world, to purify our passions, to bring our powers 
w T ell in hand to a firm will ; and, through the mys- 
tic laws of nature and of conscience which we thus 
endeavor to obey, to breathe within our souls a 
sacred sense of the Presence of a Power, infinite 
and eternal and loving righteousness — whom to 
know "is life eternal." 

De Quincey classified all writings as belonging 
either to the literature of knowledge, or the litera- 
ture of power. There are books to which we go 
for information. They give us facts and ideas. 
They constitute the literature of knowledge. They 
teach us. There are books to which we go for in- 
spiration ; to which we turn for joy and pleasure, 
for strength and courage, for patience and endur- 
ance, for purity and peace. They constitute the 
literature of power. They move us. Herbert 
Spencer's books belong to the literature of knowl- 
edge. The " Imitation of Christ " belongs to the 
literature of power. 

The literature of knowledge needs to be re- 
issued every century or generation or decade, cor- 

* The Friend : Essay x. 



ETHICAL AKD SPIKITUAL USE OP THE BIBLE. 229 

rected up to date. The literature of power is 
immortal ; fresli to-day though born milleniums 
ago. The problems of character and conduct face 
us much as they faced the Eomans and Greeks, 
the Egyptians and Hindus. The invisible in nat- 
ure and in man touches us with the same feelings 
that it stirred in Persians, Chaldeans and Akka- 
dians. Even though the Spirit's voice spake once 
in a language of the intellect which has now be- 
come obsolete, its utterances are not therefore ob- 
solete. How archaic is much of the thought of the 
" Imitation of Christ ;" shot through and through 
as it is with the tissue of mediaeval Catholicism ! 
But we forget these archaisms in the spell of a 
holy soul, in love with wisdom, " intoxicated with 
God." No archaisms in Biblical thought destroy 
its spiritual power over us. Nay, rather do they 
strengthen that power : as in our devotions we 
naturally seek old and quaint forms, buildings un- 
like other structures, music which sounds from out 
the past, words that are mellow with the rich hues 
of age ; as the archaisms of the language of our 
English Bible hold a power that is lost in the 
raw correctness of the revised version. 

In the literature of power the Bible ranks first. 
Whatever in Christian literature has most search- 
ing ethical and spiritual energy radiates the re- 
flected light of the Bible. Augustine's Confessions, 
The Imitation of Christ, Fenelon's Spiritual Let- 



230 ETHICAL ASTD SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

ters, The Saints' Best, The Pilgrim's Progress, in 
"their most appealing tones echo the voices of the 
Bible. The hymns that feed the inner life are aro- 
matic with the rich thoughts and feelings of this 
holy book. Our poets betray, in the passages 
which are the favorites of earnest minds, the in- 
fluence of these Scriptures. From Paradise Lost 
to In Memoriam, from The Temple to the Christian 
Tear, the poems which the devout delight in are 
either Biblical paraphrases or Biblical distilla- 
tions. Our masters of fiction could not have writ- 
ten the scenes which most rouse our moral nature, 
could not have conceived the characters which 
most inspire our devotional nature, without the 
Bible. Take the Bible out of Adam Bede and 
Dinah Morris, out of Robert Falconer and M. Myr- 
iel, the blessed Bishop of D., and what would be 
left of them ? The vibratory quality which most 
thrills our souls in the strains of Christian litera- 
ture is due to the Bible material in it. The Bible 
holds stored the ethical electricity on which 
Christendom has drawn, through centuries, ex- 
haustless energy. 

Outside of Christendom, while there are many 
books which we can thankfully and reverently 
place by the side of the Bible, as ethical and spirit- 
ual motors, there are none which any of us would 
think of substituting for it. The Discourses and 
the Manual of Epictetus, the Thoughts of Marcus 
Aurelius, the Dialogues of Plato, and the kindred 



ETHICAL AKD SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 231 

words of wisdom of the ancients, are indeed full 
of inspiration to earnest natures. To dip into 
these writings for a few minutes, amid the duties 
of the day, is a soul bath, most cleansing and in- 
vigorating. The Sacred Books of the East may 
well be sacred to us Westerns. A sense of grateful 
awe steals over me as, looking on these volumes, 
I think of the generations which they have fed 
with spiritual sustenance and have guided in the 
way of life. The light which lighteth every man 
that cometh into the world shines through these 
pages. The All-Father has drawn nigh to the 
souls of His children, through the holy men who 
spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost. It 
is an inestimable privilege to have these Bibles 
of Humanity ranged along our shelves, and to have 
their choicest words at hand upon our tables, in 
some apt anthology. It would be well if their 
great sayings could be read in our churches, in 
connection with our Old Testament lessons, as the 
voices of the ethnic prophets of the Son of Man. 
But if we have allowed the thought that any of 
these sacred books might become a substitute for 
our fathers' Bible, we may correct our crude en- 
thusiasms by the authority of the greatest living 
master in Comparative Religion. In the preface 
to the edition of the Sacred Books of the East 
that noble monument of our generation's scholar- 
ship, Max Miiller, writes : 

Readers who have been led to believe that the Vedas of the 



232 ETHICAL AKD SPIKITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE, 

ancient Brahmans, the A vesta of the Zoroastrians, the Tripitaka 
of the Buddhists, the Kings of Confucius, or the Koran of Mo- 
hammed, are books full of primeval wisdom and religious en- 
thusiasm, or at least of sound and simple moral teaching, will 
be disappointed on consulting these volumes. ... I cannot 
help calling attention to the real mischief that has been done, 
and is still being done, by the enthusiasm of those pioneers who 
have opened the first avenues through the bewildering forest of 
the sabred literature of the East. They have raised expectations 
that cannot be fulfilled, fears also that, as will be easily seen, 
are unfounded. ... I confess it has been for many years a 
problem to me, aye, and to a great extent is so still, how the 
Sacred Books of the East should, by the side of so much that is 
fresh, natural, simple, beautiful and true, contain so much that 
is not only unmeaning, artificial and silly, but even hideous and 
repellant. * 

Our own Bible, as I have frankly owned, holds the 
truth as the gold is held in the ore. Truth no- 
where exists " native " in human writings ; but the 
proportions of the " mineralizer " are vastly greater 
in all other Bibles than in our own. There is no 
book known that can take its place on the lecterns 
in our churches, or on the tables by which, in quiet 
hours, we seat ourselves, a-hungered for the bread 
of life. 

The pre-eminent excellence of Israel's writings 
in the literature of power, is natural and necessary. 
Israel had little originality in any science or art 
save the science and art of the soul, the knowledge 
and the love of God. Nature is economic in her 
dowries. She does not shower all the gifts of the 

* Sacred Books of the East : I. ix. et seq. 



ETHICAL AND SPIKITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 233 

fairies on any one race. She dowered Israel with 
the highest of human powers, conscience, in an 
unequalled measure. Providence nurtured and 
trained this faculty. This little nation became as 
pre-eminently the people of ethical and spiritual 
religion as the states of Greece became the people 
of art. Because of the natural aptitudes of Israel, 
and of her providential education, we should turn 
to her literature for our highest inspirations in 
ethical culture and religion. 



Wherein lies this commanding rank of the Bible 
in the literature of ethical and spiritual power? 

Speaking generally, I should say that the su- 
periority of the Bible lies in the fact that it is at 
once a literature of ethical power and a literature 
of spiritual power. We have books of high ethi- 
cal power that are weak religiously. We have 
books of high religious power that are weak ethic- 
ally. The Bible is strong in both directions. 
Hence its power. Either ethical or spiritual power 
alone is defective. Morality without spirituality 
is principle without passion. Spirituality with-^ 
out morality is passion without principle. Union 
supplements the defectiveness of each alone, and 
develops its full forcefulness. The Bible marries 
morality and spirituality, and these twain become 
one. The secularities become sacred, and the 
sanctities become sound. 



234 ETHICAL AKD SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

According to the Bible, lie who keeps the Ten 
Words obeys God. The " merely moral " man is 
a worshipper of God, though the worship may be 
silent. In Kant's great saying, They are always 
in the service of God whose actions are moral. 
Virtue becomes consciously religious, as she learns 
to recognize what she is in love with in loving 
goodness. As the love of goodness rises into a 
passion for the ideal forms of Justice, Purity and 
Truth, it takes on a real religiousness. It may 
think to stop short in an ethical culture, but it 
cannot. To feed its own aspirations it must 
worship the Ideal Righteousness as a reality. 
Its desires become prayers, its hoges become 
praises. Even though in mute longings, it pleads 

Lord, open thou our lips, and our mouth shall shew forth 
Thy praise. 

Reversing the identification of religion with 
morality that is wrought by the Bible, its influence 
is equally impressive. Religion is not the emotion 
of man in the presence of the invisible in nature, 
unless that invisible is felt to be essentially moral. 
Religion is not the finest of feelings before the in- 
visible in man, unless that unseen is also felt to be 
ethical. The Natural Religion, however nobly 
stated, which accepts any form of poetic ideals as 
religion, is very imperfect and not at all Biblical. 
Shelley's feelings for the spirit of Beauty are ex- 
quisitely fine, but under the light of the Bible 



ETHICAL AND SPIEITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 235 

they are seen to be only latently religious. A more 
penetrating vision will see in the Ideal Beauty a 
Moral Form, and then aesthetics will translate it- 
self into ethics. The unmoral sentiment of a 
Shelley for Beauty may issue in another genera- 
tion in the immoral sentiment of a Swinburne. 
Even thus the vision of the Aphrodite sank into 
the dream of a Venus. An Oscar Wilde's maun- 
derings over an art which has no reference to 
morality may possibly be poetry, but they cer- 
tainly are not religion according to the Bible, for 
all his blasphemous apostrophes to Christ between 
his praises of licentious love. Hard as the granit- 
ic core of earth is the core of religion in the Bible. 

The " stern law-giver " of Israel was Duty. Her 
supreme authority, which enjoined with absolute 
command the most unpleasant action, was— "I 
ought." She saw that " laws mighty and brazen " 
bind man to a right, which he may distort or deny, 
but cannot destroy— his Saviour or his Judge. 
Mystic in its sacredness, Conscience sat shrined 
within the soul of the holy men who spake as they 
were moved of the Holy Ghost ; her voice the very 
voice of God. The Power in whom we live and 
move and have our being is revealed in these 
books as the Eternal Bighteousness. The moral 
law is seen to be the throne of the Most High. 

In Emerson's phrase : 

Virtue is the adopting of this dictate of the Universal Mind 
by the individual will. 



236 ETHICAL AJs T D SPIRITUAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 

"What do I love when I love Thee?" sighed 
Augustine. Israel might have answered that 
question in Augustine's own words : 

Not the beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time, nor 
the brightness of the light so gladsome to our eyes, nor sweet 
melodies of varied songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers and 
ointments and spices, not manna and honey. None of these do 
I ]ove when I love my God ; and yet I love a kind of light, a 
kind of melody, a kind of fragrance, a kind of food, when I love 
my God, — the light, the melody, the fragrance, the food of the 
inner man. This it is which I love when I love my God.* 

But the Bible answer would be much more sim- 
ple and pungent : 

ye that love the Lord, see that ye hate the thing which is 
evil .... If a man say I love God and hateth His brother he is 
a liar. 

This is the fundamental secret of the power of 
the Bible. The love of goodness and the love of 
God are one. Aspiration is unconscious worship, 
and worship is aspiration conscious of its object. 

Be ye perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. 

But this noble conception of the unity of ethic- 
al and spiritual life has many aspects in the Bible. 
The Bible turns upon us every phase in which 
"Wisdom reveals herself to the sons of men, so that 
no ray of her light is lost, and that every one, how- 
ever he may stand related to her, receives her 
heavenly beams. 

* Confessions of Augustine : Book X. § vi. 



ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 237 

1. We have here the simple, homely, prudential 
aspects of virtue, which have always been particularly 
powerful on certain ages and classes. 

The maxims of a Poor Richard. are anticipated 
here, as quaint, as terse, and as sagacious in the 
ancient Jew as in the modern American. Our 
scientific teachers would replace eloquent declama- 
tion concerning vices, such as drunkenness and 
debauchery, by illustrated lectures upon the 
physiological effects of violations of nature's laws. 
They would teach men that the laws of health are 
found in the laws of temperance and purity. The 
Hebrew sages had this vision of Wisdom. Their 
proverbial sayings abound with graphic pen-pict- 
ures of the folly of vice. No illustration of the 
physical consequences of debauchery could be 
more impressive than the vivid sketch of the fool- 
ish young man, going after the strange woman as 
an " ox goeth to the slaughter," knowing not that 

Her house is the way to hell, 

Going down to the chambers of death. 

The favorite name for sin in these proverbs is 
Folly. Wisdom crieth to the sons of men, in that 
noblest writing of the sages : 

Blessed is the man that heareth me, 
Watching daily at my gates, 
Waiting at the posts of my doors. 
For whoso findeth me findeth life, 
And shall obtain favor of the Lord. 



238 ETHICAL AXD SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul. 
All they that hate me love death, 

2. These laws of life that work for our health and 
wealth loom, however, into mystic and sacred forms, 
as of the laws heavenly and eternal, whose " seat is the 
losom of God." 

When Crito urges his beloved master to escape 
from the death that had been unjustly decreed for 
him, Socrates replies in a noble personification of 
the Laws, as rebuking him for the thought of 
such an attempt to evade them ; and he must be 
dim-sighted, indeed, who does not see in the forms 
of the State Laws, the shadows of the Eternal 
Laws, august and awful, whose constraint was 
round about his will. That is the vision which we 
catch through every form of law, sanitary, social, 
or ecclesiastical, in the Bible. In the earliest code 
of the Hebrew statutes known to us, a collection of 
tribal "Judgments" or "dooms," this high and 
mystic sense of obligation steals over us. Amid 
the quaint enactments recorded in the Book of 
Covenants, whose language carries us back to times 
of extreme simplicity, we hear the words 

Ye shall be holy men unto me.* 

Our new critics may tell you that the late poet, 
who wrote that long-drawn sigh of desire for the 
Law which is bodied in the One hundred and nine- 

* Exodus, xx. 31. 



ETHICAL A^TD SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 239 

teenth Psalm, was thinking of the "Thorah" — the 
ritual law of the temple and the counsels of the 
priests. They are doubtless right, if so be that 
they do not lead you to infer that this devout soul 
was thinking only of the ecclesiastical law. Through 
it, there was rising upon his spirit the vision of the 
Law Eternal and Heavenly, the norm and pattern 
of the law that on earth binds men to purity and 
righteousness. 

Blessed are those that are undenled in the way, 
Who walk in the law of the Lord. 

Make me to understand the way of thy commandments ; 
And so shall I talk of thy wondrous works. 
Thy statutes have been my songs 
In the house of my pilgrimage. 
The earth, Lord, is full of thy mercy : 
teach me thy statutes ! 
. Thy hands have made me and fashioned me : 

give me understanding, that I may learn thy commandments. 

Forever, Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. 

They continue this day, according to thy ordinances. 

Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, 

And thy law is the truth. 

Shew the light of thy countenance upon thy servant, 

And teach me thy statutes. 

This is none other than that law of which a far 
later ecclesiastic, writing also of ecclesiastical law, 
discoursed in this wise : 

There can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the 
bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world ; all things 
in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her 
care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power : both 



240 ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE, 

angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though 
each in different sort and manner, yet all, with uniform con- 
sent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.* 

This law is none other than that holy form 
which a modern poet thus apostrophizes : 

Stern lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 

The godhead's most benignant grace ; 

Nor know we anything so fair 

As is the smile upon thy face. 

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, 

And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and 
strong. 

3. The Law thus mystic and sacred is seen to be 
both the law of nature and the law of the human soul. 

The Bible recognizes no duality of natural law 
and revealed law. All divine law is natural, and, 
as such, is a revelation. Physical and moral laws 
are but different forms of one and the same order. 
The same Power is working in the world around 
man and in the world within man. The lower 
forms of Its action are to be interpreted by Its 
higher forms. Nature is to be resolved by Man. 
The Ten Words were given as the statutes of Jeho- 
vah, himself the personification of some form of 
nature's force. Out of this simple germ grew the 



* Richard Hooker : Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book L, ch. 
xvi. § 8. 



ETHICAL AtfD SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 241 

noble tliouglit which anticipated the knowledge 
of our savans and the intuitions of our seers ; who 
unite in showing us one order in the starry heav- 
ens and in the mysteries of mind. Thus it is that 
the Bible feeds so richly, when read aright, that 
awe which steals upon us as we face nafcure and 
see ourselves mirrored there in shadowy outline ; 
and realize the One in all things — God. 

There is a beautiful illustration of this in a no- 
ble poem that our later critics have handled with 
a strange lack of perceptiveness. The Nineteenth 
Psalm opens with a lofty apostrophe to Nature, 
commencing : 

The heavens declare the^glory of God, 
And the firmament sheweth His handywork. 

At the seventh verse the Psalm abruptly passes 
to a eulogy of " The Law " — the moral law shrined 
in the priestly Thorah : 

The law of the Lord is an undefiled law, 
Converting the soul ; 
The testimony of the Lord is sure, 
And giveth wisdom unto the simple. 

Here we have, say our learned critics, two 
psalms welded into one, a song of nature and a 
song of the soul. As though nature and man did 
not form one divine poem in two cantos ! As 
though the system of the world around us did not 
type the world within us ! As though it were not 
always the most instinctive action to pass from 
11 



242 ETHICAL AKD SPIEITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

the sense of an Order in the starry heavens, and 
the awe thus awakened, to the sense of an Order 
in the soul of man, and the deeper awe thus 
roused ! 

We know that the Hindus and Egyptians made 
use, each, of one word to express the law of nat- 
ure and the law of conscience. The physical 
order interpreted the sense of a moral order. 

The Egyptian maat, derived like the Sanskrit rita, i'rom merely 
sensuous impressions, became the name for moral order and 
righteousness. * 

The Nineteenth Psalm is only the expression 
among the Hebrews of this wide-spread instinct ; 
an instinct which learned critics may lack, but 
which the poet still inherits ; as the Sphynx whis- 
pers to him of the double life of nature and of 
man, that yet are 

By one music enchanted, 
One Deity stirred. 

4. The Bible leads us on to that sense of sin, in the 
presence of this " Law," which no lower thought of 
law can quicken. 

Violations of physiological law Nature stamps 
as folly. Offences against social laws the State 
brands as crime. Transgressions of Ideal and 
Eternal Law become sin. It is not only fool- 

* Le Page Renouf : Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 250. 



ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 243 

ish or disgraceful to break the moral law, it is 
wrong. This is the sense of guilt in disobedience 
that is roused in each of us by the Bible, as by no 
other book ; that has been quickened in Europe, 
historically, by these sacred Scriptures, as by no 
other writings. The Bible has given to humanity 
a new and intense ethical perception of evil. 

The strenuous moral earnestness of the Puri- 
tan and the Methodist is vitalized from these 
books. The very type of saintship in Chris- 
tendom is unique. It is no mere ceremonial cor- 
rectness for which the priestly Ezekiel pleads 
with tender pathos : 

Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions 
whereby ye have transgressed, and make you a clean heart and a 
new spirit ; for why will ye die, house of Israel ? 

It is this intense sense of the exceeding sinful- 
ness of sin which oppressed the great-hearted 
Paul, and wrung from him the bitter cry : 

wretched man that I am ! Who shall deliver me from the 
body of this death. 

How vividly this sense of sin expresses itself in 
the Fifty-first Psalm ! There is here a plaint infi- 
nitely deeper than the chagrin and remorse of the 
man who has committed an " indiscretion," or be- 
come entangled in an " intrigue ; " there is the cry 
of a soul that has betrayed its highest, holiest 
fidelities, and lies low in the dust before the Heav- 
enly purity : 



244 ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

Wash me throughly from my wickedness, 
And cleanse me from my sin. 
Cast me not away from Thy presence, 
And take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. 

To enter into the spirit of this sigh, of penitence 
is a new knowledge of the human heart. The 
Bible thus leads men to live as in the presence of 
an awful Power of Holiness, which is searching 
through and through our beings. "We cannot 
understand the Biblical " salvation " unless we 
have fathomed, at least, the shoaler experiences 
of these saintly souls of old, and know some little 
of the depths of sin. 

5. The Bible wakens in the breast of man an ethical 
passion for the ideal and eternal lata, which, apartfrom 
early Buddhism, has no parallel in history. 

The prophets are aflame with the ardors of 
this sacred enthusiasm. The ordinary passions 
of mankind are rivaled in intensity by the mys- 
tic passion of their souls for the Heavenly Wis- 
dom. They stand amid the wild whirl of selfish 
strife in the society of their day, and lift on high 
the holy forms of Justice and Brotherhood, as 
though expecting their commonplace cotempora- 
ries to turn aside from practical affairs, and seek 
for them ; and, so subtle and searching are the 
appeals of these heavenly visions, men do actually 
turn from mammon to worship these impoverish- 
ing divinities ; and a great movement arises, look- 



ETHICAL AKD SPIRITUAL USE OP THE BIBLE. 245 

ing to the bringing down of these ideals upon the 
earth, as the ruling powers in the court and the 
exchange. The regenerating force of Christen- 
dom has lain in the coming of these prophets, 
generation after generation, to the children of 
men, to lead them upon the mount where they 
should clearly see those lofty shapes, command- 
ing instant loyalty from honest souls. The ominous 
travail-throes of society to-day await one stimulus 
to free the new order that is struggling to the 
birth — the passion for ethical and social ideals, 
which the Bible, rightly administered, would in- 
spire. 

The prophetic spirit is the vital force of the 
Bible. Its insistent power reappears in Paul ; 
a man consuming in the fires of this holy passion, 
and kindling its ardors ^ in the souls of untold 
myriads. His great letter to the Romans, so 
strangely misread as a mere dogmatic treatise, 
breathes and burns with this lofty enthusiasm. 
Its central thought, its threading motif, heard 
anew in every critical movement of the argument, 
is — Righteousness. The Master in whom the 
Bible centres, enriches earth with a new bene- 
diction : 

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness. 

This highest passion of mankind is wakened 
by the Bible as by no other book. Through it, 



246 ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 

the mystic Forerunners reveal themselves to the 
human soul most alluringly; enthralling it with 
their pure charms, dispelling the illusions of the 
senses and the glamor of the world, in the light 
of their holy loveliness. The Eternal "Wisdom 
calls from out these pages to the sons of men : 

Hearken unto me ye that follow after righteousness. 

6. The Bible reveals these ethical ideals as no mere 
alluring visions, but as the substantial realities of being. 

Men say to those who speak of these high con- 
ceptions — "They are the dreams of sentimental- 
ists, the will-'o-the-wisp lights that beguile men 
away from the terra firrna ; to be trusted and fol- 
lowed by no practical man." " Idealist " is a 
term of reproach. And justly, from any other 
point of view than that which the Bible, true to 
the most penetrating discernment of humanity, 
opens to us. These ideal forms are not the empty 
conceits of man's brain, bred from the fumes of 
his boundless egotism. They are not the clouds 
that gather and form and break into airy unreality 
in the atmosphere of earth. They are the shad- 
ows falling upon the soul of man from the unseen 
Realities, which alone have substantial and abid- 
ing being. The laws of nature are surely not the 
baseless fabric of a dream. These ideals are sim- 
ply those laws, transfigured into their spiritual 
substances. Whatever in our blindness we may 



ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 247 

persuade ourselves elsewhere, over the Bible we 
recognize the true character of the visions which 
so strangely stir us. This is the power of the 
Bible. Christian seemed to Mr. Worldly Wise- 
man a fool. But he saw the heavenly city, and_ 
trudged along, sure that time would prove him in 
the right. Christian carried in his hand this 
Book. With this Book in our hands, we, too, are 
sure that the visions of Purity and Justice, which 
we dimly see afar, are substantial and real, and 
that man will win at the last to the land where 
they are the light thereof. 

Whereupon I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. 

7. The Bible thus inspires a buoyancy and exhilara- 
tion which feed the fresh forces of all noble life. 

No poet is needed to tell us that 

Virtue kindles at the touch of joy. 

We know it in our own experience. We notice 
it in every great revival of religion. We trace it 
through the history of Christianity. The story of* 
the early days of Jesus is, as Benan called it, " a 
delightful pastoral." In the person of humanity's 
greatest idealist, the highest joy of the soul was 
set in the framing of one of nature's brightest 
scenes. Even from the shadows of the garden 
of Gethsemane, He bequeaths to his little flock 
the legacy of his free spirit : My joy I leave with 
you. The Christian Society entered into that be- 



248 ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

quest, and in its first exhilaration overflowed the 
hard coast lines of property, and realized a happy- 
brotherhood. 

And all that believed were together, and had all things com- 
mon ; and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to 
all men as any man had need. And they, continuing daily with 
one accord in the temple, and breaking bread at home did take 
their food with gladness. 

The prophets were filled with a buoyancy of 
spirit that scarce would let them keep down to 
the plodding steps of social progress ; that con- 
stantly rapt them away into the future, whence 
their voices echo back the gladness of their vis- 
ions. The good time is coming on the earth. 
The longings of man's soul are to be realized. 
Crushed by no disappointments, wearied out by 
no delays, the prophets maintain an indomitable 
hopefulness ; their voices the carollings of the birds 
that greet the dawn of day : 

Sing, Heavens ; and be joyful, earth; 
And break forth into singing, mountains. 
For the Lord hath comforted his people ; 
And will have mercy upon his afflicted. 

One treads here the upper zones, where the air 
is rare and every draught an inspiration; where 
the Laws are seen majestically sweeping every 
force into the measured movement which is mak- 
ing all things work together for good to them that 
love God. 



ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 249 

With a tact truer than any theory, our canon 
of scripture has been closed in the Book of the 
Revelation ; whose visions look beyond the break- 
up of Jerusalem and shadow on the far horizon, 
where earth and heaven melt in one, the fair form 
of the City of God, coming down from out the skies 
upon the new world wherein dwelleth righteous- 
ness. 

In these days, when " joy is withered from the 
sons of men," it is like drinking from the Castalian 
springs to draw within our souls from the Bible 
the sense of that kingdom of God which is joy in 
the Holy Ghost ; into which men are to come 

With everlasting joy upon their heads: 
They shall obtain joy and gladness 
And sorrow and sighing shall flee away. 

You learn the power of the Bible as you find how 
the joy of the Lord is your strength. 

8. The Bible leads this sense of Law into that awful 
vision wherein " Conscious Law is King of kings." 

The Laws appear substantial and real inasmuch 
as they are seen to be but phases of the Infinite 
and Eternal Being, the Righteous Lord who loveth 
righteousness. It is a conscious, intelligent, holy 
Being, whom Israel worships through these ideal 
forms of goodness. However He transcended 
their poor personalities, as transcend them they 
knew He must, God was yet best expressed in the 



250 ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

form of the human, conscious personality. Man, 
the highest creature, must be, they said, most 
nearly in the form of God. As man takes up the 
noblest characteristics of the life below him, so 
his own noblest characteristics must be taken up 
into the Lord of Life. God cannot be less than 
personal, however much more than personal He 
may be. He is to be thought of by us, in lack of 
nobler imagination, as personal. Israel thus grew 
into the conception of the Infinite Power, manifest 
in the order of nature and in the order of con- 
science, as conscious Power ; One in whose image 
man was made, the Father of the mystic " I " ; 
whose nature is the law of creation, whose pur- 
pose is its plan, whose will is its exhaustless 
energy. 

This is the secret which has kept the religions 
inspired by the Bible from lapsing, as other relig- 
ions have done, into lifelessness. 

Egypt was the land of a religion which had won 
a high conception of the Divine unity ; a religion 
which was scientific in its forms of thought, and 
earnestly moral in its spirit ; but which failed to 
keep distinct in mind the order of nature from the 
Being on whom it reposes, and thus sank into the 
dreamy pantheism of its cultured classes, and 
the poetic polytheisms of its people. Of this 
lapse, Benouf writes : 

All gods were in fact but names of the One who resided in 
them all. But this God is no other than Nature. Both indi- 



ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 251 

viduals and entire nations may long continue to hold this view, 
without drawing the inevitable conclusion, that if there is no 
other God than this, the world is really without a God. But 
the fate of a religion which involves such a conclusion, and with 
that conclusion the loss of faith in immortality, and even in the 
distinction of Right and Wrong, except so far as they are con- 
nected with ritual prescriptions, is inevitably sealed. * 

Neither Judaism, nor Mohammedanism, nor 
Christianity, the religions fed directly or indi- 
rectly from the Bible, have run, or can well run 
into this fatal error. The Divine Being who is 
mirrored in the Bible is the Conscious Intelli- 
gence to whom alone of right belongs that ineffable 
name — God. This is the thought and this is the 
word which hold the spell of the Bible power over 
the human soul. Nowhere else is the sense of 
God so alive, nowhere else does it so thrill the 
whole being of man. It was this living God 
whom these holy men of old were seeking ; not 
simply the august ideals of the soul, but the Eter- 
nal Being who casts them as his shadows upon 
man : 

Unto Thee lift I up mine eyes, 

Thou that dwellest in the heavens. 



My soul truly waiteth still upon God, 
For of Him cometh my salvation. 

Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks, 
So longeth my soul after Thee, God. 

*Hibbert Lectures, 1879, p. 279. 



252 ETHICAL AKD SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the Living God ; 
When shall I come to appear before the presence of God ? 

It is God whom these holy men find. The Inef- 
fable Presence rejoices their souls, and as we keep 
company with them rejoices our souls also : 

Lord, Thou hast been our home 
From one generation to another. 



Whoso dwelleth in the secret-place of the Most High 
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. 



Lord, Thou hast searched me out and known me. 

Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising ; 

Thou understandest my thoughts afar off. 

Thou art about my path and about my bed, 

And spiest out all my ways. 

For lo, there is not a word in my tongue 

But Thou, Lord, knowest it altogether. 

The inspirations which we feel from the Bible - 
words are the breathings of the Eternal Spirit. 
The Divine whispers, which are too often inartic- 
ulate in nature and even in our souls, are articu- 
late in the great Bible-words — the words proceed- 
ing from out of the mouth of God, on which man 
iveth. The power of the Bible is that the deafest 
souls can therein hear — God. 

9. God speaks in A MAN. 

The Bible centres in the story of a life which 
was so filled with the Holy Ghost that this Man 
became the symbol of the Most High, the sacra- 



ETHICAL AXD SPIKITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 253 

ment of His Being and Presence, the sacred slirine 
of Deity. As when the long-drawn travail of in- 
strumentation labors through the opening move- 
ments of the ninth symphony, with a strain too 
fine for any voicing save by man, there bursts at 
length upon the tumultuous storm of sound the 
clear, high, song of joy from human lips ; so from 
the mounting efforts of a nation's insufficient ut- 
terance there rises at last a voice, which takes up 
every groaning of the Spirit in humanity into the 
perfect beauty of a human life divine. 

And so the Word hath breath, and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds, 
In loveliness of perfect deeds, 

More strong than all poetic thought. 

The light of the Son of Man is the life of men ; 
the light for our minds and the warmth for our 
hearts. In the Pow r er in whom we live and move 
and have our being, we see "Our Father who art 
in Heaven." In the laws of life we read the 
methods of His schooling of our souls. In the 
sorrows of life we receive His disciplinings. In 
the sins that cling so hard upon us we feel the 
evils of our imperfection, from which He is seek- 
ing to deliver us througk His training of our 
spirits. In the shame of sin we are conscious of 
the guilt that His free forgiveness wipes away, 
when we turn saying, Father, I have sinned. In 
death we face the door-way to some other room 
of the Father's house, where, it may be, just 



254 ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

beyond the threshold our dear ones wait for us ! 
In Christ himself we own our heaven-sent Teacher, 
Master, Saviour, Friend ; our elder Brother, who 
in our sinful flesh lives our holy aspirations, and, 
smiling, beckons us to follow Him, whispering in 
our ears — To them that receive me I give " power 
to become the sons of God." 

The power of the Bible is — Christ. 

ii. 

When Sir Walter Scott lay in his last illness, he 
asked Lockhart one day to read to him. " From 
what book shall I read ? " said Lockhart. " There 
is but one book," was Scott's answer. Those who 
have sought the "power to become the sons of 
God" will understand this hyperbole of the most 
healthy human mind in modern English literature. 
Tested by experience there is indeed, in the wide 
range of the literature of power, no book to be 
mentioned with the Bible for feeding the life of 
God in man. Our fathers found this true, and 
their children cannot correct their judgment. The 
substitute for the Bible, as an ethical and spiritual 
instructor, is not out. • 

I speak to those who are in earnest in the 
building of a man. You need this book, my 
brothers. Luther's higher life dated from his 
discovery of the Bible. Have you discovered the 
Bible? Within the body of human " letters " have 



ETHICAL AND SPIEITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 255 

you found out the divine soul of the Bible? 
Through the chorus of human voices have you 
heard the voice of the Eternal Power? If not, life 
holds one more rich "find" for you — a treasure 
hidden in the field over which you have so lightly 
strayed. 

Buy a Bible, my brothers ! The current coin of 
the land, in the shops of our best booksellers, 
may have failed to buy for you a real Bible. No 
noble book is ever to be made your own in 
this easy fashion. Buskin tells us that the 
great picture will not give itself to us unless 
we give ourselves to it. The Bible must have its 
price. The best comes dearest. If you will not 
pay you cannot buy. Pay for the real Bible your 
costliest offering of mind and heart. Spend upon 
it, day by day, your careful, reverent study, until 
beneath your love the Book warms into life ; and, 
having proven well your loyalty, this teacher of 
the soul opens its soul to you and whispers — 
Henceforth I call you not servant but friend. 
"Wait in these courts until the Eternal Wisdom, 
who walks within this temple, turns her face upon 
you, "mystic, wonderful;" and the common 
places grow refulgent with a new and heavenly 
beauty, and you humbly say — This is none other 
but the house of God, and this is the gate of^ 
heaven. 

How shall we thus rightly read the Bible, for 



256 ETHICAL AND SPIEITUAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 

ethical and spiritual upbuilding? Let me offer 
some plain and practical suggestions to this end. 

(1.) Bead it daily. 

Tour soul needs its daily bread. Do not starve 
your soul. Do not try to fatten it on chaff. Get 
the best soul-food, the long tried manna that forms 
upon these pages day by day, for him who will be 
at pains to gather it. He must be busy, indeed, 
who cannot find time to keep himself alive. 

(2.) Head it in the choicest moments of the day. 

The best picture should have the best setting. 
Our fathers' symbol of the opening of a new day 
was the opening of the Bible. Their symbol of the 
closing of another day's duties was the closing of 
the Bible. Can we improve upon their ritual? 
John Quincy Adams noted in his journal his cus- 
tom of reading in the Bible each morning, of 
which he well observed : 

It seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the 
day. 

Pitch the day aright with this tuning-fork, and 
hush the babel- voices of the world to its tones of 
peace at night. 

(3.) Bead the Bible whenever you need some special 
influence of strength or cheer, amid the temptations 
and trials of the day. 

It holds the unfailing corrective for the mani- 



ETHICAL AKD SPIRITUAL USE OP THE BIBLE. 257 

fold disorders of our busy lives. To think its 
thoughts and breathe its desires, even for a few 
moments, is to have the horizon of the senses 
open, the heavy atmosphere of earth clear, the 
illusions of the world evanish, the fever of business . 
cool and calm, the tempting appetites and pas- 
sions slink down shamed into their kennels. It is 
to have the dark look of life lighten, the sting of 
disappointment lose its venom, the weariness of 
sickness forget itself, and the sorrow of the 
stricken heart sob itself asleep within the ever- 
lasting arms of One who, like a mother, comforteth 
his children, and who with his own hand wipes 
away the tears from our eyes. 

A few days after one of the battles before Rich- 
mond, a Southern soldier was found unburied. 
His right hand still clasped a Bible, and his stiff 
fingers pressed upon the words of the Twenty- 
third Psalm : 

I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me ; 
Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me. 

(4.) In the choice of these daily readings, follow the 
guidance of tJie souTs sure instinct. 

Tou need no critical knowledge to teach you 
what parts of the Bible are the most highly in- 
spired. The spiritual sense will appraise these 
books aright. As the beasts are led instinctively 
to the herbs that hold healing for their ail- 
ments, so you shall find the tonic and the balm 



258 ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 

that you need. You will naturally pasture for 
the most part in the Prophets, the Psalms, the 
Gospels, the great Epistles of Paul, the First 
,, Epistle of John, and kindred writings. You may 
dip into these books as the bees dip into the flow- 
ers, now burying themselves in the luscious honey- 
suckle, and now lingering on the rich rose, if so be 
that you only suck sweetness into your soul. 

(5.) Wheresoever you read, read in the spirit 

"I was in the spirit on the Lord's day," wrote 
the seer. If he had been in the understanding 
merely, he would not have had many visions. The 
Spirit must interpret the Spirit's words. The Bible 
requires, as Bushnell wrote : 

Divine inbreathings and exaltations in us, that we may as- 
seend into their meanings. 45 " 

In his last sickness Archbishop Usher was ob- 
served, one day, sitting in his wheel-chair, with a 
Bible in his lap, and moving his position as the 
sun stole round to the westward, so as to let the 
light fall on the sacred page. That is a symbol of 
the right use of the Bible. 

I picked up lately the choice Bible which I se- 
lected for myself as a boy, and on the fly-leaf, in 
my boyish hand, I read the words : 

Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things 
out of Thy law. 

* God in Christ, p. 93. 



ETHICAL AXD SPIKITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE, 259 

I still find that the best commentator, for the 
ethical and spiritual use of the Bible, is one Mas- 
ter Praying Always. 

As the bard with the Muse, so the critic in the 
presence of Wisdom, must forget his skill ; " must 
be, with good intent, no more his, but hers : " 

Must throw away his pen and paint, 
Kneel with worshipers. 

Then, perchance, a sunny ra\, 

From the heaven of fire, 
His lost tools may overpay, 

And better his desire. 

Thus buying Bibles for yourselves, my friends, 
see that your children buy themselves the Bible 
in the same good coin. 

(a.) Bead with them the tales of its noble men. 

Do not hesitate to read with them these stories 
of the ancients, because there may be the com- 
mingling of legend with history, of myth with fact. 
You do not hesitate to read them the story of 
William Tell, although there are woven into it the 
elements of a very old and wide-spread sun-myth. 
These mythic elements have been woven around 
some real historic hero, and the spirit of his hero- 
ism breathes through every fold of the drapery. 
How charmingly Kingsley tells the tales of the 
Grecian heroes ! Through his crystalline lan- 
guage we seem to inhale the crisp, clear air of the 



260 ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

morning of Greece, in which the simple souls of 
child-men thus shaped their dreams of duty around 
their older dreams of nature. Conscience fash- 
ioned these primitive fancies upon its form, and 
pulses through them its quickening life ; the touch 
of which makes our children buoyant with aspira- 
tion, so that they mount on high, like Perseus of 
the winged feet. 

Thus read the matchless stories of the Hebrews, 
mindless of legend or of myth. The Spirit of 
Holiness breathing through these tales will inspire 
the souls of the children, without restraint from 
the questions that the reason may raise. Tell 
them no lies if they ask you questions. Read 
these ancient stories as stories, of good and noble 
men ; stories written down long ago, and told from 
father to son through longer ages before they were 
thus written out. Leave the children to detect 
the legendary elements. I find them quick enough 
at that work without parental help. The bright 
child feels the unreal in the tales that he most 
loves ; but he loves them none the less, perhaps all 
the more, because of the spell upon his imagina- 
tion that he would not break ; while through them, 
upon his open soul, streams in the holy power of 
these sacred stories. Do you concern yourselves 
with impressing the moral of these God-breathed 
tales. 

Eead with your children the stories of the dear 
Master, and make His life grow real to them, till 



ETHICAL A^D SPIRITUAL USE OE THE BIBLE. 201 

He shall draw them after Him, in the steps of His 
most holy life. 

(b.) Form in the children the habit of daily reading 
in the Bible. 

Say to each of them, in your own way, that which 
Sir Matthew Hale wrote to his child : 

Every morning read seriously and reverently a portion of the 
IJoly Scriptures. It is a book full of light and wisdom, and will 
make you wise to eternal life. 

(c.) Cultivate in them a genuine interest in the Bible. 

The aids to an intelligent interest in the Bible- 
books are now so plentiful, and the human charm 
of them is so great, that it ought to be an easy thing 
for a parent to awaken a real fondness for these 
immortal writings. The best safeguard against 
bad taste in literature or life is the formation of a 
good taste. These are books, to learn to love which 
is the making of a man. Our children may not 
grow into the genius, but they will grow into some- 
what of the goodness of the illustrious and saintly 
John Henry Newman, if, in after years, they can 
write the first lines of their autobiographies in the 
words which open the biographical part of the 
Apologia Pro Vita Sua : 

I was brought up from a child to take great delight in read- 
ing the Bible. 



262 ETHICAL AND SPIKITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

(d.) Train the children to commit to memory the 
choicest passages of the Bible. 

John Ruskin doubtless, at the time, rebelled 
against the strict rule of his good aunt, which kept 
him busy on the Sundays memorizing the Script- 
ures ; but he is thankful now, as he has owned, 
for the discipline which stored his mind with their 
creative words. What a treasury of holy thoughts 
and influences does he carry within him who has 
written on his mind such passages as the nine- 
teenth, twenty-third, ninety-first, one hundred and 
third, and one hundred and thirty-ninth Psalms ; 
the third and eighth chapters of Proverbs ; the 
fortieth chapter of Isaiah; the sermon on the 
mount, the parable of the prodigal son, and the 
thirteenth chapter of first Corinthians. Happy 
he who, like the palm tree in the desert, can strike 
his roots below the arid surface of the world into 
fresh and living waters, and thus keep life green 
amid the droughts of earth. The parable of the 
temptation of Christ should teach us how to arm 
our children against the wiles of the Evil One, 
whom they must surely meet : " And he said, It 
is written." In the stress and strain of conflict, 
when the air is dimmed with the dust of the con- 
tending forces and the vision grows confused, it is 
a saving sound to hear the ringing call of Duty, 
from the hills where One watcheth over the battle- 
field. When sore pressed by the foe, it may prove 



ETHICAL AXD SPIEITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 263 

our victory to fall back against the strong stone 
wall of an external authority, that can hold our 
lines unbroken. It is no wonder that the tempt- 
ing sailors could do nothing with the cabin-boy 
who was " chock full of the Bible." 

(e.) Teach your children, as you teach yourselves, 
to hearken through these voices of the human writers 
to the voice of God. 

Bother then with no theories of inspiration. 
Never deny nor conceal the true human voices of 
these men who spake of old, but never fail to 
affirm the true Divine breath in these men who 
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 
And, since this is the power of the Bible, em- 
phasize the Divine speaking; make every God- 
breathed word sound to the children's souls as the 
very voice of God ; until, in simple faith and rev- 
erent docility, they shall each answer — Speak, 
Lord : Thy servant heareth ! 

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, 
And a light unto my path. 

Such is the holy office of the Bible : such be its 
blessed service to our souls, and to the souls of 
our dear children ! May we walk in its light 
through life; that in the valley of the shadow of 
death that light may still fall upon us. 

It is not many months since I was called to the 



264: ETHICAL AKD SPIRITUAL USE OF THE BIBLE. 

house where, in a ripe and honored age, lay a 
warden of this church, stricken suddenly by death. 
On the table in his room, as he had left it open 
after reading in it that morning, I saw a Bible. 

I can ask for my funeral no better symbol of the 
aim and effort of my poor erring life, if so be it 
shame me not too much, than that which told the 
story of an humble servant of the Lord. Upon 
his coffin, with the book-mark between the pages 
where he last had read, was — his Bible ! 



Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Script- 
ures to be written for our learning ; grant that we 
may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, 
and inwardly digest them, that by patience and 
comfort of Thy Holy Word, we may embrace and 
ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, 
which Thou has given us in our Saviour, Jesus 
Christ. Amen, 



THE END. 



ENOCH MORGANS SONS 



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in expression, and the result of these combined faculties has been such verse as 
the world will, in all liklihood* never see again. Long after more pretentious 
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admirable passages with which they abound, are his tragedies; the work that 
gives us the highest notion of his genius, power and versatility is his Don Juan. 
The Don is at times free and almost obscene, and the whole tendency of the poem 
way be considered immoral ; but there are scattered throughout tt the most 
exquisite pieces of writing and feeling— inimitable blendings of wit, humor, 
raillery and pathos, a7id by far the finest verses Byron ever wrote. He may be 
said to have created this manner ; for the Bernesco style of the Italians, to 
which it has been compared, is not like it" — Life and Literary Labors of Lord 
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true fioetry, not -mere doggr el rhyme. His genius was universal, a?id the themes 
he exercised it in, consequently, of boundless variety. He fiainted familiar 
man?iers with the touch of a master, which to this day impresses the reader of 
the fiages fienned five centuries ago with the hauyitingidea that the fioef s char- 
acters are alive and moving in a fi age ant before him. His humor was as natu- 
ral and unforced as his fiathos was deefi, his sentime7it fiure, and his fiassion 
fiery and genuine. It was Coleridge who said of Chaucer, "'I take unceasing 
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DTSCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE. 



standard authors. It was a labor of love, and had been well appreciated by the 
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language, and has for young readers all the picturesque and vivid interest that 
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as the heroes of the Arabian Nights and of the other favorite books of childhood. 
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IX. Oliver Twist, Pictures from Italy, and American Notes. 
X. Old Curiosity Shop and Hard Times. 
XI. Tale of Two Cities and Sketches by Boz. 
XII. Barnaby Rudsre and Mystery of Edwin Drood. 



/ 



DISCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE. 



Dickens (Charles)— Continued. 

XIII. Great Expectations, Uncommercial Traveller, and 

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I. Middlemarch. 
II. Daniel Derouda. 

III. Romola. 

IV. Felix Holt. 



V. Romola. 
VI. The Mill on the Floss. 
VII. Scenes from Clerical Life 
and Silas Marner. 



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Byron, by Professor Nichol. 
Milton, by Mark Pattison. 
Shelley, by J. A. Symonds. 

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Cowper, by Goldwin Smith. 
Pope, by Leslie Stephen. 
Southey, by Prof. Dowden. 



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Spenser, by the Dean of St. Paul's. 
Locke, by Thomas Fowler. 
Wordsworth, by F. Myers. 

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Gibbon, by J. C. Morison. 
Hume, by Prof. Huxley. 
Johnson, by Leslie Stephen. 



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Goldsmith^ by William Black. 
Scott, by R. H. Hutton. 
Thackeray, by Anthony Trollope. 
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Burke, by John Morley. 
Burns, by Principal Shairp. 
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Chaucer, by Prof. A. W. Ward. 
Cowper, by Goldwin Smith. 
Defoe, by William Minto. 
Gibbon, by J. C. M orison. 
Goldsmith, by William Black. 
Hume, by Professor Huxley. 
Johnson, by Leslie Stephen. 



Locke, by Thomas Fowler. 

Milton, by Mark Pattison. 

Pope, by Leslie Stephen. 

Scott, by R. H. Hutton. 

Shelley, by J. Symonds. 

Southey, by Prof. Dowden. 

Spenser, by the Dean of St. 
Paul's. 

Thackeray, by Anthony Trol- 
lope. 

Wordsworth, by F. Myers. 



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Sir Walter Scott has said : 

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Goldsmith, both in prose and verse, is one of the most delightful writers in 
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DISCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE. n 

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DISCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE. 13 

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DISCRTPTIVE CATALOGUE. 



15 



Lo veil's Library, 



Under the title of " Lovell's Library ; A Weekly Publica- 
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cans 20 

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kie Collins, Parti 10 

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the New Utopia, by Lord 
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gus Redcliff. A new orig- 
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Scribe 20 

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Rhoda Broughton 20 

24. The New Magdalen, by 

Wilkie Collins. 20 

25. Divorce, byMargaret Lee, 20 

26. Life of Washington, by 

Leonard Henley 20 

27. Social Etiquette, by 

Mrs. W. A. Saville ... 15 

28. Single Heart and Double 

Face, by Chas, Reade. . 10 

29. Irene; or, the Lonely 

Manor 20 

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31. Ernest Maltr avers, by 

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azon, by Jules Verne. . . 10 

35. The Cryptogram, by 

Jules Verne 10 

36. Life of Marion, by Horry 

and Weems 20 

yj. Paul and Virginia 10 

1%. Tale of Two Cities, by 

Charles Dickens 20 

39. The Hermits, by Rev. 

Charles Kingsiey 20 

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and Marriage of Moira 
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Life, by Octave Feuillet, 20 

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son. 10 

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ianity, by Canon Farrar, 

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Eliot, Part 1 15 

Do. Pat II 15 

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Charles Gibbon 20 

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Rocked, by "The Duch- 
ess" 20 

59. Last Days of Pompeii, 

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60. The Two Duchesses, by 

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Kingsiey, Part 1 15 

Do. Part II 15 

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Bronte • 20 

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Alexander, Part I ..... 15 
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DTSCRIPTIVE CATALOGUE. 



17 



Lovell's Popular Library. 



In i6mo volumes, handsomely 
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Ln Press. 
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BY BJORNST. BJORNSON. 
The Happy Boy, and Arne. 

B Y WILLI A M BLA CIC. 
A Princess of Thule. 

BY CHARLOTTE BRONTE. 

Jane Eyre. 

A Y RHODA BROUGHTON. 
Second Thoughts. 

BY WILKIE COLLINS. 

The Moonstone. 
The New Magdalen. 

PY CARL DETLEF. 

Irene : or the Lonely Manor. 

By REV. CANON FARRAR, D.D. 
Seekers after God. 

BY OCTAVE FEUILLET. 

Marriage in High Life. 

BY CHARLES GIBBON. 
The Golden Shaft. 

BY JAMES GRANT. 
The Secret Dispatch. 

BY LUDOVIC HALEVY. 
L'Abbe Constantine. 

B Y THOMA S HA RD Y. 

Two on a Tower. 

BY JOSEPH HATTON. 

Olytie. 

BY LEONARD HENLEY. 

Life of Washington. 

BY HORRY AND WEEMS. 

Life of Marion. 



bound in cloth, black and gold, 
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Unveiled. 

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BY REV. CHARLES KINGSLEY. 

Hypatia. 

The Hermits. 

BY MARGARET LEE. 
Divorce. 

BY H. W. LONGFELLOW. 
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Outre-Mer. 

BY LORD LYTTON 

The Coming Race : or the 

New Utopia, and Leila : or the 
Siege of Granada. 

BY A. MATHEY. * 

Duke of Kandos. 
The Two Duchesses. 

BY MISS MULOCK. 
John Halifax. 

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The Giant Raft. Part I., 800 
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"Thechapte s range from such subjects as science and spiritualism to the 
consumption of sm ke. They include a dissertation on iron filings in tea, and 
they discuss the action of frost on wjtter-pipes and on building materials. The 
volume begins wuh an article on the fuel of the sun, and before it is concluded 
it deals with Count Rum ford's cooking stoves. All these svbjects. and a great 
many more," are treated in a pleasant, informative manner. Mr. Williams knows 
what he is talking about, and he say? what he ha to say in such a way as to 
prevent any possible misconception. The book will be prized by all who desire 
to have sound information on such subjects as those with which it deals."— 
Scotsman. 

" To the scientific world Mr. Williams is best known by his solar studies, 
but here he is not writing so much for scientists as for the general public. It has 
been the aim of his life to popularise science, and his articles are so treated that 
his readers may become interested in them and find in their perusal a mental 
recreation. ' ? — Sunday-school Chronicle. 

' We highly recommend this most entertaining and vauable collection of 
papers. They combine clearness and simplicity, and are not wanting in philoso- 
phy likewise.'"— Tablet. 

LIFE OF OLIVER CROMWELL, 

His Life, Times, Battlefields, and Contemporaries, by 

PAXTON HOOD, 

Author of " Christmas 9 Evans," " Thomas Carlyle," "Romance of 
Biography" &c. 

!Be±3=Lgr 35To. 73 o± LOVELL'S ZLUBZE^AuIRfX"., 

12mo, handsome paper covers, 15 CENTS. 

This is a popular biography of the career of Oliver Cromwell, which will be 
welcomed by those who are unable to pursue the stirring history of his life and 
times, in the elaborate volumes to which the student is at present referred. 

For sale by all booksellers and newsdealers, or sent free of postage 00 
receipt of price by the publishers. 

JOHN W. LOVELL CO., 

14 and 1 6 Vesey St., New York. 



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